Ambulance provided air, not oxygen
The what-and-who part of the puzzle didn’t take long for the Illinois Department of Public Health to figure out. The why remains a mystery.
Within months of receiving a 2014 report that members of the Williamsfield Fire Protection District near Peoria were filling ambulance oxygen tanks with plain room air, the department had identified culprits and leveled charges. There was, by all appearances, nothing to gain from volunteer emergency medical technicians giving plain air to victims of cardiac arrest, drug overdose, allergic reaction and scores of other maladies that require the administration of oxygen en route to the hospital.
“IDPH did not focus on motive, just protection of the public,” department spokeswoman Melaney Arnold writes in an emailed response to questions about the state investigation that resulted in a $21,000 fine and the district eliminating ambulance service at one of its three stations.
In 2007, maybe earlier, volunteers with the district about 100 miles north of Springfield started filling ambulance oxygen tanks with room air instead of pure oxygen, the state alleged in written complaints as part of an administrative enforcement action. The state determined that 169 patients who required pure oxygen were instead given room air, the kind with 21-percent oxygen that firefighters breathe from tanks when they enter smokefilled buildings. The state won’t say who blew the whistle.
Filling oxygen tanks with air isn’t a straightforward task. Oxygen tanks and equipment used to fill breathing tanks for firefighters have different fittings specifically designed to prevent room air from being transferred to oxygen tanks, the state says, and so members of the volunteer department, including a trustee on the district board, used a jury-rigged adaptor on tanks, risking explosions or fire. It went on for years, according to the state, with the board approving oxygen purchases for a different station without ever buying oxygen for the Williamsfield station. And top-ranking district officials knew about it, according to the state, which called the violation “an unprecedented level of misconduct.”
“The original decision to fill medical oxygen tanks with ordinary room air was made by the respondent’s trustees and respondent’s treasurer,” the state alleges in a 2015 complaint against the district.
Initially, the state sought a fine of more than $191,000 against the district but agreed to settle the case for $21,000 in the spring of last year. Ralph Klein, the district’s chief, agreed to surrender his state emergency medical technician’s license. Klein in the settlement agreement denies any wrongdoing and says that he was first notified that oxygen tanks were being filled with air shortly before a test conducted by the emergency medical services coordinator for OSF St. Mary Medical Center in Galesburg showed that tanks contained air, not oxygen. The state says that Klein knew about that tanks had been improperly filled for at least a month before tanks were tested.
The state initially threatened to revoke the emergency medical technician license of Ty Landon, a fire district trustee whom the state said had personally filled oxygen tanks with room air and had knowingly administered air instead of oxygen to patients at least a dozen times between 2011 and 2014.
“Respondent’s conduct was dishonorable, unprofessional and unethical and of a character likely to deceive, defraud and/or harm the public,” the state wrote in its notice of intent to revoke Landon’s license. Landon denied that he had knowingly given air instead of oxygen to patients, and the state allowed him to keep his license in a settlement that called for Landon to receive training.
Janet Collopy, the district’s director of ambulance operations, surrendered her prehospital registered nurse license and agreed that she would never re-apply for that license or for any other advanced license from the state health department.
The state says that Collopy took no action after being informed that oxygen tanks contained room air approximately one month before tests were conducted and an ambulance immediately pulled from service. The state also said that Collopy failed to appreciate the difference between oxygen and room air. Furthermore, the state accused Collopy of allowing people to respond to ambulance calls and provide treatment who were not authorized by a hospital-based emergency medical system director. The state also said that Collopy didn’t keep accurate records for the educational programs for emergency medical technicians that she oversaw in Williamsfield.
While barred from treating patients in the field as a result of the investigation, Collopy kept her health department license to teach classes to emergency medical technicians as well as three nursing licenses from the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which issued a reprimand, but took no further action. Collopy is employed as a nurse practitioner at OSF St. Mary Medical Center in Galesburg. She could not be reached for comment.
Asked whether the hospital had any concerns about Collopy’s run-in with regulators, Shelli Dankoff, spokeswoman for OSF Healthcare System, noted in an email that Collopy holds a license to care for patients as advanced practical nurse.
“We respect the privacy of our employees as it relates to personnel matters,” Dankoff wrote.
