2 Investigates: Lawsuit questions safety of state transportation system

ATLANTA — A Channel 2 Action News investigation discovered companies that shuttle thousands of ill and elderly Georgians to doctors’ appointments every day are exempt from federal safety rules.

A family is now suing Southeastrans, a private company contracted by the Georgia Department of Community Health. Southeastrans and other so called “brokers” are responsible for regulating and inspecting subcontractors who provide non-emergency transportation services for hundreds of thousands of Medicaid and Peach Care for Kids recipients each year.

"A tragedy. It's to me almost like a Shakespearean play," Sharon Bright said of losing her mother, Sylvia Mornay.

Morney was a passenger in one of Southeastrans’ subcontracted vans in Midtown Atlanta leaving a routine doctor’s appointment in 2010. According to court records, the driver of that van suddenly slammed on the brakes while driving on Peachtree Street near Collier Road. The driver hadn't properly secured Mornay's wheelchair and she was thrown to the floor. Two months later she died from those injuries.

"It just was a horrible, horrible thing to experience," Bright recalled to investigative reporter Aaron Diamant.

Mornay was in Atlanta as a refugee—displaced because Hurricane Katrina had destroyed her home.

"She survived breast cancer, and then she survived the evacuation and the whole losing everything as far as Hurricane Katrina is concerned," Bright told Diamant when he visited her home in New Orleans. "It was very difficult, and a lot of times very surreal, to know that we had been through so much and then to have that happen to her in such a fashion."

Bright said she believes better oversight of Georgia’s Medicaid transportation program could have saved her mother’s life.

The Department of Community Health is contracted to pay Southeastrans more than $17 million a year. The company has its own small fleet of vans and drivers, but 99 percent of the 1.5 million rides it gives each year are done by dozens of subcontractors.

"This industry affects the most frail of our population, seniors and children," said Bright’s attorney Fred Burkey.

Burkey and Bright have already sued and settled with the subcontractor, Drop-4-Care. Burkey believes Southeastrans is also liable for Mornay's death.

"The industry is not following safety rules and they should be," Burkey explained to Diamant.

Southeastrans' nearly 800-page contract with the state does includes a long list of mandatory safety standards for drivers and vehicles the company is supposed to enforce.

Southeastrans Chief Administrative Officer Benjie Alexander said they have no choice but to follow the rules the state asks of them.

"Ultimately, the state sets the standards, and we follow those standards," Alexander said.

Alexander had Diamant meet with Southeastrans’ head of training and toured one of the company’s wheelchair accessible vans. He saw first-hand how cumbersome securing a wheelchair can be.

“We want it to be as comfortable and safe transport as possible at all times,” Alexander said. “We’ll do whatever we need to do to make sure it is as safe as possible.”

Alexander said Southeastrans and their subcontractors are doing 125,000 trips a month, but accident rates are less than one hundredth of a percent.

“We really don’t have a large number of complaints related to vehicle condition,” Alexander said.

Channel 2 investigators filed an open records request with the DCH back in early March for all incident reports made by non-emergency transportation subcontractors since 2010. By print time of this story Channel 2 had only received a portion of that records request, which included nearly 150 incident reports. Paralegals with DCH said the records were “voluminous,” and it would take month to redact medical information from the lengthy request.

At the heart of Bright's negligence claim is the fact that Southeastrans and its subcontractors don't have to follow super-strict federal motor carrier safety rules. According to Georgia law, companies operating vehicles capable of carrying 10 or fewer people to medical appointments are exempt.

Many of the wheelchair and stretcher vans used for non-emergency medical transport in Georgia where designed for 15 passengers, but retrofitted to accommodate medical equipment. Burkey said retrofitted or not, they should still be held to the federal standard.

"I think the industry's seeking to exploit a loophole," Burkey said.

Alexander said each vehicle is inspected by Southeastrans every six months in addition to random inspections, as required in the contract with the state.

Diamant asked DCH Director of Transportation James Peoples how frequently the state audits the contracted brokers’ inspection and training records.

"When we go out and do our inspections on that contractor we look for that documentation," Peoples said.

"Well, how often are you in there auditing?" Diamant asked.

"We go out as often as we like," Peoples replied.

"OK, but how often?" Diamant asked

"Multiple times in a year, it kinda just depends," Peoples said.

When asked about possibly enforcing federal policies, Alexander said he would follow the state’s lead.

"We don't write the rules, so if the state would change that, we would certainly do our part to comply with the regulation," Alexander said.

Until then, Sharon Bright hopes her lawsuit, win or lose, serves as a spotlight.

"For me it would mean that my mom's death was not in vain," Bright said.

WSBTV