Complaints lead to fines, regulations

A Tucumcari woman's complaints about a driver's "extreme and bizarre" conduct prompted state regulators to issue five-figure fines to two nonemergency medical transportation companies and impose new regulations on the sector.

After a two-day hearing earlier this year, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission imposed fines of $49,210 against We Care Transportation and $21,090 against Superior Medical Transport.

The PRC on Sept. 16 also issued an order that within six months, all nonemergency motor carriers will maintain more accurate record-keeping of client pickups and drop-offs, define "rogue" drivers and report them to a database, submit a copy of random drug-testing policies and report all complaints to the Consumer Relations and Transportation Division.

Crystal Winters, 67, of rural Tucumcari, first filed her handwritten complaints against We Care more than two years ago.

Thousands of New Mexico residents - many of them low-income Medicaid patients - use nonemergency medical transportation companies to get to doctor appointments. According to a PRC document, We Care is the largest such transport provider in the state, with more than $2 million in annual gross revenues. Superior had a contract with Presbyterian Health Services to coordinate among those companies to give transportation to PHC's Centennial Medicaid Plan patients.

Winters repeatedly used We Care and other nonemergency medical transportation services to get to doctor appointments because macular degeneration affected her vision and she lacked a reliable vehicle.

Alarming ride

PRC documents show most of the two-day hearing focused on Winters' allegations regarding a Tucumcari driver for We Care.

PRC hearing officer Christopher Ryan called the driver's alleged conduct "extreme and bizarre."

PRC documents identify the driver. The Quay County Sun is not naming him because there are allegations of criminal conduct but no criminal charges have been filed against him.

In one instance, Winters accused the driver of arriving late at her home.

Winters stated in her complaint the driver said he would kill a former law enforcement officer's mother and another woman.

Winters stated the driver was highly agitated, scratched his arms and said he felt as if worms and bugs were under his skin.

He also made derogatory comments about dialysis patients and "wished they would all die," Winters stated.

In her complaint, Winters stated after she arrived at her appointment at an Albuquerque medical office, a receptionist told her the driver repeatedly entered the building and asked about her whereabouts.

On the way back, the driver said he hated Albuquerque and "wished he could kill everyone in the city," Winters stated.

Winters stated the driver darted in and out of traffic at high speed on a city street, frightening her. She stated she tried to get out of the vehicle or yell for help at a red light, but its doors and windows were locked. She stated the driver stopped on a street and screamed at her.

Winters said on the way back to Tucumcari the driver became agitated at the sight of a large truck with Arabic words on its side. He pulled over onto a dirt road parallel to Interstate 40 and screamed at her, so alarming her that she fingered a knife she kept under her phone in her purse, she stated.

Afterward, Winters said she called her health insurer, who said the incident was "the worst case of patient abuse she had ever heard" and urged her to report it.

A former law enforcement officer and a sheriff's deputy also told her the driver broke the law and should have been arrested, Winters stated.

Winters stated said she contacted the sheriff's office, which urged her to contact Albuquerque Police instead.

Second report

Another Tucumcari woman who did not know Winters also filed a complaint about the same driver who took her to a doctor's appointment in Roswell.

She stated the driver was "ranting and raving" and showed her his "kill box" that contained razor blades, matches and a road flare. The woman stated the driver told her he was going to pick up another patient who had filed a complaint against him and said, "I'll kill her if I have to." (The driver did not pick up that patient during that trip.)

During a stop in Melrose, the woman called to cancel her doctor's appointment so the driver would have to take her back home, she stated. She said the driver asked inappropriate questions and kept the doors and windows locked on the way back to Tucumcari.

The woman reported the incident to the Tucumcari Police Department.

A PRC investigator found the driver had landed a new job with a shuttle service in Ruidoso. One passenger told the investigator she saw him get angry at a broken gas pump, throw a drink at a gas station door, curse at stoplights and other "moments of irrational rage." Another woman expressed discomfort with the driver and refused to ride home with him.

The investigator interviewed the driver and found him "untruthful, deceptive and evasive" in his answers to the allegations. The driver has since been fired from the Ruidoso shuttle service, PRC reported.

We Care officials denied the allegations to PRC, saying they were never proven. Ryan, however, said he found the allegations "credible" because of similarities between Winters' and other women's complaints.

Ryan criticized a We Care compliance officer's investigation into Winters' allegations, saying he was "far too eager to dismiss" them.

The accused driver also never underwent drug testing after the incidents, according to the compliance officer.

Ryan also noted a 37-day delay between Winters' most serious allegation and Superior ordering We Care to stop using the driver.

"There is evidence We Care knew about the incident but did not act," Ryan wrote.

Ryan said Superior and We Care also provided conflicting information on the driver's last day of employment there.

Superior also erroneously assigned Presbyterian clients to the driver when he worked for Shuttle Ruidoso, according to PRC documents.

PRC staff wrote: "Problem drivers are easily recyclable, and they can leave one motor carrier and take their problems with them."

Arguing for additional regulations for nonemergency medical transport companies, Ryan wrote: "Regulated entities are, to some degree, regulating themselves. This is self-evidently problematic."

We Care officials did not respond to questions seeking response from the Quay County Sun. Superior Medical Transport is no longer in the medical transport business, according to PRC.

Late pickups

Ryan also found a We Care transport had picked up Winters late at least three times.

Ryan noted many medical providers impose penalties of $50 to as much as $200 for patients who show up late to their appointments "regardless of whose fault it is."

Ryan wrote that We Care's transportation verification forms "do no accurately capture pickup and drop-off times," which he labeled as "troubling."

A PRC investigator also said he found 135 pages of complaints against We Care from Jan. 1, 2018, to Feb. 28, 2019 - many of them about late pickups and drop-offs of patients who are ill or disabled.

Epilogue

Winters said she kept all her PRC correspondence in a plastic tub about a foot deep. The documents she had collected from the case filled the tub and then some.

She was asked during a phone interview why she came forward and pressed her case against We Care to the PRC.

"I want these poor, sick, crippled people to be protected and never, ever have to go through the horror and trauma and degradation and humiliation these scumbags put on you," she said, adding that many people who use those transport companies are among society's most vulnerable.

Winters said she remains seriously ill but no longer uses medical transport companies. She instead uses a caretaker to help her get around.

She said she comforts herself with a passage from Ryan's pre-hearing letter.

" 'Crystal Winters was instrumental in bringing to the forefront the systemic failure of the nonemergency medical transportation industry in New Mexico,'" she read from Ryan's passage.

"I am so proud of that," she said, her voice breaking with emotion.