ORNGE air ambulance is paying $50,000 a month for a Hamilton hangar that sits empty and unused.

It’s the latest blunder at the provincial service tasked with transporting patients, saving lives and spending health care dollars wisely.

“Yes, there has been a significant delay in getting (hangar renovation) done,” ORNGE chief operating officer Tom Lepine said in an interview Thursday.

The massive, 31,000-square foot hangar at the Hamilton International Airport is owned by Cargojet. ORNGE has decided to move its Toronto air ambulance base to Hamilton and leased the hangar in December 2010, according to ORNGE spokesman Gannon Loftus. At roughly $50,000 a month, the publicly funded ORNGE has wasted an estimated $600,000 for space that until the last few weeks has sat idle.

“There was a delay in getting the structural steel” needed to outfit the hangar to ORNGE’s specifications, Lepine said. The plan is to have two helicopters and an airplane use the hangar. Crew quarters have to be built and Lepine said his goal is to open for business in April.

ORNGE receives $150 million a year from Ontario taxpayers to provide airborne medical transport from numerous bases across the province. For many years it has located a key base at the Toronto Island, with close proximity to the top hospitals in Ontario. Lepine said studies have shown him that a combination of lack of access to emergency services (a land ambulance picking up a patient has to use the ferry) and weather conditions on the island made it a poor choice for a base. Numerous paramedics interviewed by the Star say that is wrong, but last year ORNGE decided to move to Hamilton.

ORNGE initially had a deal with another company that owned a hangar but the deal fell through. Loftus said a new lease was signed with CargoJet for its hangar on December 1, 2010.

“Yes, I can confirm there has been no activity at the hangar for months,” CargoJet spokesperson Paula Dhillon said.

The negotiations between ORNGE and Cargojet were complicated by a potential conflict of interest that both sides say was addressed properly. Maria Renzella, ORNGE’s executive vice-president, is married to John Kim, Cargojet’s chief financial officer. Spokespersons for ORNGE and Cargojet said both declared a conflict of interest. Renzella of ORNGE was not involved in the deal as a result and Kim dealt with another ORNGE executive.

It’s not the first time the provincial air ambulance service has run into problems with a hangar.

Back in 1993, the last time the Toronto Star investigated air ambulance service in the province, one of the stories that emerged was about the construction of a $1.4 million hangar at Toronto Island Airport. In those days, the Ministry of Health ran the service (ORNGE was created in 2005). The Star reported that the hangar was not big enough for the Dash 7 airplane’s tall tail fin. The hangar was built for the Dash 7 air ambulance but somebody goofed.

For weeks the health ministry insisted the plane fit and patients could be offloaded in the warm comfort of the hangar. The issue was cleared up when then-health minister Frances Lankin asked an aide to investigate. “I was told that, yes, the plane fit, but you had to tip the plane up like a teeter totter at the front so that the tail could fit in,” Lankin recalled in a later interview with the Star. The hangar was eventually altered to fit the airplaine.

Meanwhile, newly appointed ORNGE president Ron McKerlie settled into his job at ORNGE Thursday. He gave a town hall speech to ORNGE staff. In an interview, McKerlie, seconded from his job as deputy minister of government services for Ontario, said his job is to find out how government dollars are being spent and make sure “they are spent wisely.”

McKerlie said there are “a lot of good people at ORNGE and they have been hurt by the actions of a few.”

Original Article
Source: Star