3/16/2022
The biggest news isn’t in the paper yet - it is the City’s announcement and release of an RFP to run a 32,500 sq ft shelter! See my previous post for details. I will be keeping a close eye on that, stay tuned - Dan
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Spokesman-Review
Council OKs 10 ‘hire-ahead’ positions for police
KREM
KXLY
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Spokesman-Review
Council OKs 10 ‘hire-ahead’ positions for police
By Greg Mason
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Becoming a Spokane police officer can take between six months and a year from the time candidates take a public safety test until they’re trained, according to the department.
Aiming to start that process sooner during times when the department is fully staffed, the department is getting 10 new “hireahead” positions to prepare for any anticipated departures, such as retirements.
The Spokane City Council voted unanimously Monday night to create the 10 spots, which are not designed to increase the police force’s number of uniformed officers.
Rather, in the event of a planned departure and the police department is fully staffed, the open hireahead spots will allow SPD to hire candidates to start training toward filling anticipated vacancies.
Without these positions, the police department – unable to hire above its authorized staffing level of 356 commissioned police officers – has had to wait for vacancies to open before hiring, said police spokeswoman Julie Humphreys.
Councilwoman Lori Kinnear, a cosponsor of Monday’s legislation along with Council President Breean Beggs and Councilman Michael Cathcart, said she would like to see hire-ahead positions instituted at the Spokane Fire Department as well to, in part, lower the need for overtime.
“I believe we need to go above and beyond our currently allowed staffing levels even with this hire ahead and add additional positions as we go forward into the future,” said Cathcart, chair of the council’s Public Safety and Community Health Committee, “but I think this is a great next step. Not the last one.”
The hire-ahead positions are expected to be cost-neutral, as covered by savings from retirements and separations, according to the city.
Jacquelyn MacConnell, the director of strategic initiatives for Spokane police, said the department does not anticipate tapping into the positions until 2023 because it has 20 Basic Law Enforcement Academy spots for prospective officers per year in addition to any lateral candidates coming on from other departments.
In the event the hire-ahead positions are needed sooner, however, MacConnell said “we would be more than happy to use them.”
“It’s not a desire to wait. It really just depends on how many people we can hire,” she told council members during a Feb. 28 Finance and Administration Committee meeting. “Right now, we know of at least another 10 vacancies that are coming up.”
Local police accountability activist Anwar Peace said during a public comment period Monday while he isn’t opposed to increasing SPD’s staffing given Spokane’s size, he would like to see the hiring processes revamped.
Peace called on city leaders to consider “outside the box thinking” with hiring police officers, particularly laterals from other law enforcement agencies, while also calling for random drug and psychological testing for all police personnel.
“It doesn’t take a big incident for an officer to develop psychological issues,” Peace said. “All the little things that they go through after time can build up and manifest itself in disastrous ways.”
Both Cathcart and Beggs agreed with the notion of revisiting hiring practices.
“I think if we’re talking about 21st century public safety, we just have to fine-tune things and get it better, which is not a critique of the current officers at all,” Beggs said Monday night. “We’re just asking officers to do a lot more, especially in the human services and the mental health area, and we just need to hire with that in mind as well.”
Greg Mason can be reached at (509) 459-5047 or gregm@spokesman.com.
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KREM
Investigators say Paul Means billed the state for treatment he never provided and for hours he never spent with patients.
SPOKANE, Wash. — A Spokane medical provider is accused of stealing millions of dollars in state Medicaid funds.
Investigators say Paul Means billed the state for treatment he never provided and for hours he never spent with patients.
Means has been under investigation for years. A Medicaid fraud agent with the state attorney general's office was just granted another search warrant to collect more digital evidence. Investigators say Means altered patient notes so he could charge more, and those charges did not add up.
In one 24-hour period, Means clocked in 70 hours and the state paid him.
Court documents paint Paul Means as a person who cared more about profits than patients.
His company, Spokane-based Abilia Healthcare, was flagged in 2019 when an audit showed an unusually high amount of medicaid claims for in-person examinations.
Investigators allege that Means and nurse practitioners that worked for him treated people for substance abuse and mental health. In the span of less than three years, Means billed the state more than $1.2 million, making his small company the highest statewide biller in that category and a clear outlier.
According to court documents, an advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP) working for Abilia Healthcare emailed Means in 2019 saying she was concerned that her notes did not match what she documented.
“It appears that almost every note I’ve completed since starting has at least one section of inaccuracy. Are these computer errors, or an error on the part of the back office staff ?,” the email read.
For example, the entire Wenatchee Valley hospital system billed the state $162,000 for the same services.
Abilia Healthcare was put under a microscope. Another audit looked at more than 6,000 Medicaid claims and found 97% of them to be in error.
Court documents highlight outrageous examples. In one case, Means clocked 70 hours of treatment in a 24-hour time span.
Investigators started tracking his car. One day, he made a trip to Home Depot and billed the state for 41 hours of medical treatment.
While on vacation in Taiwan, investigators say Means logged 887 hours of work. He earned nearly $45,000.
Between 2013 and 2020, the state paid his company $5 million.
Investigators say Means used his company account to pay off credit cards, purchase several luxury vehicles and two homes on the South Hill a few doors down from each other. We were unable to reach Paul Means for comment.
Paul Means is accused of first-degree theft, leading organized crime and Medicaid false statement. His company shut down in 2020 after investigators served their first search warrant.
Means has not been arrested. The investigation is still ongoing.
Investigators say Means paid people in the Philippines $3 to $4 an hour help him prepare and file those false Medicaid claims. The state is looking into whether other nurses that worked for him knew what was going on.
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KXLY
Posted: March 15, 2022 7:12 PM by Elenee Dao
SPOKANE, Wash. – Soon, sexual assault survivors in eastern Washington will no longer have to travel far to get help. The Washington legislature unanimously passed a bill to bring more sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE) to eastern Washington by providing training in Spokane.
The bill will require Washington State University’s College of Nursing to establish a SANE program. Currently, there’s only one place to go get sexual assault nurse training in the Evergreen State and it’s in western Washington.
“They do a great program it’s just difficult for one program to be able to facilitate everything through one state,” said Victoria Sattler, the lead faculty for professional development at the WSU’s College of Nursing.
Sattler, who is also an emergency room nurse at Providence Sacred Heart, says more nurses specialized in sexual assault examinations are needed.
She says some places, especially in rural areas, don’t have enough of those nurses trained to do that, which then could force some people to travel far to get that help.
“For us to be able to provide an educational platform, it would facilitate that training so that individuals, as nurses, are able to not only provide the emotional support for a patient during their time of need,” Sattler continued. “But, also to be able to collect the evidence for prosecution and court case down the road.”
Sexual assault nurse examiners have at least 40 hours of additional training to properly help victims. It includes training on how to do evidence collection, interview patients and document them for any potential court cases. These specialized nurses need to know what they can do on the legal side of things, too
In most cases, when a victim needs an exam, it takes about four hours. Nurses can’t leave the victim to help other patients during that time, Sattler said.
Erin Williams Hueter, the director of Lutheran Community Services Inland Northwest, said having more trained nurses would help.
“It’s important to have more so we have 24-hour coverage in every emergency department in our region. When a person presents there and they say they’ve been sexually assaulted, the difference is enormous when you get somebody who’s trained, and experienced and feels confident in what they’re doing, and isn’t feeling pulled and pressured to leave for other emergencies that are also so very important in the emergency room,” Williams Hueter said.
WSU said it’s ready to start putting the training program together once it gets Governor Inslee’s signature.
It plans on using the International Association of Forensic Nursing program, which there isn’t a program like that in Washington.
The university also plans to have hands-on clinical experiences, too, once the program gets up and running.
“I’m excited that we have incredible partners within our community that when they saw and recognized a need for our region every one of them stepped up and said, ‘We’re here to help, What can we do?” And, it’s a great moment when everybody can honestly say that what really comes forward is the importance of patient care and that’s what we’re here for,” Sattler said.