Coakley
BOSTON (Legal Newsline) - Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley announced on Friday that an ambulance company will pay $350,000 in civil penalties and costs to settle allegations that its staff was not properly certified.
Trinity EMS Inc. allegedly knew that its emergency medical technicians were not properly certified in accordance with Massachusetts law. The company, however, allegedly billed the state for hundreds of ambulance trips that did not comply with regulations.
Trinity is headquartered in Lowell and has locations in Haverhill, Chelmsford, Tyngsborough, Lawrence, and New Hampshire. The company has enacted policies and procedures for administering training courses to ensure that its EMTs are certified properly. The company also created a new policy requiring its employees to take necessary certification classes and/or refresher classes with a pre-approved trainer or training facility.
Coakley's complaint, filed on Thursday, comes as part of a wider look into fraudulent representations made by EMTs who claim to have taken certain training courses required to maintain their certification.
Leo Nault, a former Trinity EMT instruction, pleaded guilty in 2011 for his part in a recertification scheme that created fake training records from 2006 through 2009, allowing dozens of emergency personnel to become certified without completing the required courses.