Newsday (Melville, NY)
November 24, 1997
Edition: NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
Section: NEWS
Page: A04
Topics:
Index Terms:
SUFFOLK COUNTY.C PETER HACKETT.EMERGENCY.COUNSELING.
Suffolk's Trauma Care Bruised / Disputes still swirl around ex- director
Author: Elizabeth Moore. STAFF WRITER
Article Text:
Five hours after TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island's South Shore, Suffolk County's former emergency medical director said, he asked why the trauma counseling team he had called hadn't arrived.
Dr. C. Peter Hackett said he was told his order had been countermanded by David Fischler, the county's fire, rescue and emergency services commissioner. Furious, Hackett said, he got police to let the team past roadblocks, and in the next several days they debriefed hundreds of traumatized recovery workers in a marathon effort that won the county's emergency medical system a state award Nov. 15.
Fischler, who was in overall command of the scene in those first hours, said he only wanted the counselors to stand by until he could take charge of a chaotic situation. His communications director, Miles Quinn, admitted he may have "miscommunicated" Fischler's order but denies Hackett's account of the conversation between them - "I never spoke to him."
In his first detailed interview since resigning last month, Hackett said he viewed that incident as "basically a direct signal to me that as the medical director, my input was not wanted." But that night's dispute was also typical of the behind-the-scenes jockeying, acrimony and accusations of lying that scarred relations between the two senior officials during Hackett's two-year tenure.
As the county now launches its search for the next medical director to oversee the quality of emergency care provided some 97 volunteer agencies, observers say important warnings can be taken from the troubles that dogged Hackett.
"There needs to be some kind of affirmative statement that it [emergency medical care] will be under the control of a board-certified emergency physician, that his orders will not be countermanded by a layperson," said Dr. Mary Hibberd, former county health commissioner.
Hackett, who left for a better-paying job at Central Suffolk Hospital in Riverhead, inspired both fervent loyalty and violent opposition among volunteers and public officials, and deep divisions within his own staff. Hackett's supporters, many of whom signed petitions urging the county to keep him on, praised him as a selfless healer who made vital improvements in patient care before being felled by what one staffer who asked not to be identified called the "political horror" of a "good-old-boys operation."
"I think he did a great job," said Dr. Mark Henry, chairman of emergency medicine at University Medical Center in Stony Brook. "He was a patient advocate . . . a physician who was willing to get involved."
"He was an innovator and a progressive person," said Roy Fries, president of the Babylon Central Fire Alarm system. "Maybe the county was going too slow."
Critics painted the doctor as an erratic would-be hero who embellished his achievements and meddled with the volunteers' work while neglecting his job as an administrator. "I think he had a world of good intentions and in some areas was very forward thinking . . . but sometimes he wasn't very well-organized," said Bill Larkin, formerly Hackett's top aide and now acting director.
Hackett's departure was the culmination of two years of increasingly ugly conflict that worsened after Hibberd, his strongest ally, was pushed out last spring in a dispute with County Executive Robert Gaffney. By the end, officials confirm, Fischler was meeting with senior county officials to air allegations that Hackett had abused his cellular phone, falsified his time sheets, and even caused spinal injuries to three men he helped to rescue from the wreckage of a caved-in water tank at Long Island MacArthur Airport.
"I felt it was necessary to make the appropriate people aware that this was out there in the rumor mill," Fischler said. "We had complaints about how he conducted himself."
Hackett has scoffed at those charges, and Acting Health Commissioner Clare Bradley said they were unfounded. But Hackett said he quit minutes after a confrontation with Fischler over the rumors in Bradley's office in September, in which he concluded her backing was lukewarm.
"I was continuously dealing with a sparring match I realized I had no chance of winning," Hackett said.
That version of his departure is "odd," Bradley said, considering Hackett asked to keep his job on a part-time basis, without pay if necessary, in combination with the Central Suffolk job. She said no.
Hackett, who had been an emergency room physician at a number of Long Island hospitals, was the first EMS medical director whose job requirements included responding in person to trauma scenes to monitor and teach the volunteers from nearly 100 agencies who practiced under his medical license. He said he cut his pay by more than half when he accepted the $105,000-a-year post he considered "a nirvana - I planned to be here for the rest of my life."
Roving between his office and accident scenes all over Suffolk County, Hackett treated Police Commissioner John Gallagher when he collapsed with a stroke at the county executive's office last year. The counter island at his Oak Beach home was built to double as an examining table where, Hackett said, neighbors' fingers have been reattached and heart problems treated.
But tensions began building soon after Hackett started in April, 1995. While some volunteers, like Brookhaven Ambulance Chief Greg Miglino, delighted in their new "field commander," others, such as Suffolk County Ambulance Chiefs' Association President Drew Silverman, complained that his oversight role was created to be purely administrative. Meanwhile, Hackett and Fischler, who coordinates Suffolk's volunteer agencies, had different priorities.
"Dave [Fischler] can come down heavy if he thinks you're trying to interfere in his world," said one senior county official who asked not to be named. "The volunteers are a world unto themselves, and anybody that enters does so on their terms."
Among Hackett's achievements, said Henry of the University Medical Center, were a quality assurance system and improved communications with hospitals. But some emergency officials, like Quinn, say they began to mistrust Hackett after hearing stories from him they suspected were embroidered or false: One day in February, 1996, Hackett mentioned he had just come from the scene of a roof collapse in Bay Shore, where he'd been crawling around in the wreckage, searching for survivors. Quinn, a member of the Brentwood fire department that answered that alarm, said he knew Hackett was not there.
"I was shocked," Quinn said. "It affected my confidence in him from that point forward." Hackett said he does not recall any such conversation.
While Hackett told Newsday that he was flown by the Coast Guard out to the Flight 800 wreckage hours after the explosion, lowered onto the deck of a yacht and then swam through the fuel-slicked ocean "to examine a body," Coast Guard officials said that was impossible.
"Absolutely not," said Cmdr. Jeff Pettitt, operations officer at Air Station Brooklyn, whose helicopters flew over the crash scene. "It was bedlam out there."
Among the controversies that helped lead to Hackett's resignation were:
- The mystery memo: It was this kind of confusion that drove Hackett's friction with Fischler into the open a year ago. In early 1996, Suffolk started a pilot program requiring ambulances to turn off their sirens on minor calls. After Hackett criticized the pilot in print, Legis. Fred Towle (R-Shirley) called him to testify at a legislative hearing - only to have Fischler's office present him with an unsigned memo under Hackett's name giving his blessing to the plan.
Hackett angrily confronted Fischler, saying he had never seen the memo before and was being sabotaged by his own staff. But Larkin, Hackett's former aide, insisted he had prepared the memo months earlier on direct, point-by-point instructions from Hackett.
- Defibrillators: By August of this year, Hackett was complaining to Bradley about a "dreadful lack of cooperation" from volunteers in his highly praised, county-financed program to equip Suffolk police with defibrillators. The program aims to speed help to heart-attack victims in the critical first minutes; by the time Hackett left, some 60 cars were so equipped.
Some volunteers complained that Hackett was leaving them out of the planning loop and kept putting them off when they asked how to handle the touchy handoff of those patients from police to volunteer care. By June, as the program's launch was imminent, fire officials were heaping vitriol on Hackett at meetings.
But Suffolk police officer Ed Zimmerman, a Nesconset volunteer fire lieutenant who helped set up the program, countered that volunteers showed little interest when he and Hackett repeatedly offered to visit their firehouses and answer questions."I bend over backwards for the volunteers in this county and I was surprised we didn't get more requests," Zimmerman said.
- The MacArthur rescue: Rumors circulated for months after a dangerous March rescue of three workers seriously injured when the water tank they were repairing collapsed under them. Hackett said the rumors accused him of causing spinal injuries to the workers after he rappelled down into the icy water to stabilize and soothe the victims with intravenous fluids and morphine, but "I just brushed it off."
Those rumors crystallized into a direct accusation at an early August meeting between Fischler, Bradley, Deputy County Executive Eric Kopp and county executive aide Joseph Michaels. When Bradley later asked Hackett for an explanation, he produced a hospital report that indicated the victims never suffered the spinal injuries Fischler alleged. But some volunteers who worked alongside Hackett that day remain vocal in their criticism.
"Hackett should have never, ever been in that tank," said Lakeland Fire Commissioner Robert Galione, a New York City rescue fireman. Hackett didn't rappel in - he climbed a ladder, wearing no protective gear, Galione said. Galione said Hackett told rescuers to remove one victim from the first-aid backboard he was strapped to, an instruction Galione found ludicrous.
"We ignored Hackett," he said. "We operated as if he was not there." Hackett said he doesn't recall that exchange, adding Galione would have been subject to discipline if he'd disregarded the doctor's instructions.
"I feel hurt by all of these things," Hackett said. "How much of this can a person take?"
Caption:
Newsday File Photo by John H. Cornell Jr.-Dr. C. Peter Hackett,
Copyright (c) 1997 Newsday, Inc.
Record Number: 963248187
