Transcare CEO Shares Woes Of Job

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He's an EMT for businesses

Richard Galant

Money & Power

 

April 18, 2005

When the pressures of his job as head of the country's largest privately owned ambulance company get to him, Matt Harrison tells his wife he needs to find something easier to do.

She knows better. Harrison says she thinks he's addicted to the adrenaline rush.

"This is an endlessly exciting business," says the chief executive of TransCare. That's certainly true, if you consider coping with life-saving rescues, lawsuits, constant financial pressure, big-city politics and the health-care bureaucracy exciting.

The company puts about 500 ambulances and wheelchair vans on the road most days in New York, Long Island, suburban Philadelphia, Baltimore and much of the rest of the mid-Atlantic region.

When you look at Harrison's career, you have to agree with Judy Harrison, who's an interior designer, that her husband seeks challenges.

And now, at 60, he's found one that harks back to the way he started out - resuscitating a company in combat.

Harrison was literally born into the Army at West Point, where his father taught economics. He was a member of the West Point Class of 1966, chronicled in Rick Atkinson's book "The Long Gray Line," and a company commander in Vietnam, where he was awarded a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts.

As he bantered with his company's uniformed workers outside Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx one day last week, you could see remnants of his Army years.

He's gone from The Long Gray Line to a gray pin-striped suit, but his posture is rigid and he displays a smiling, joking, easygoing way with the troops.

It's still jarring to Harrison that one of the ambulances goes by the handle of 27-FRANK, according to the fire department's phonetic code for the letter F. In the Army it would be 27-FOXTROT.

He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1986 and joined a military contractor in the Bronx called Wedtech. Only a few months later the company collapsed, infamous for executives who embezzled millions and bribed politicians. Harrison stayed on and worked with creditors and prosecutors to sort out the mess, ultimately co-authoring a book about it.

Out of that experience, Harrison developed a reputation as a turnaround specialist, working in retail, resort, frozen food, steel pipe and parking lot businesses.

Six years ago, the private investors who own TransCare brought him aboard. The company has faced a whirlwind of trouble and controversy. Yet, it has its rewards for someone who takes pride in being part of a fighting force. This is his longest post-military assignment yet, and he hopes to stay on "indefinitely."

Harrison, who goes back to West Point most years to talk to students about ethics, says it's crucial to figure out your "bedrock principles" and stand by them. "If you foul things up in this business," he says, "people are going to die, and people are going to jail."

TransCare ambulances hired by city hospitals were allowed to begin responding to 911 calls during the Giuliani administration. Controversy erupted over campaign contributions from entrepreneur Steve Zakheim, who sold his ambulance company's assets to TransCare and stayed on.

After an investigation, Zakheim received probation for violating federal election law. He also faced civil suits involving sexual harassment and improper Medicare billing allegations and wound up resigning from the company.

Apart from the ethical challenges, there was also a financial one. Harrison found that the company couldn't handle the $130 million in debt it had incurred to pay for its rapid expansion. Harrison took TransCare into and out of bankruptcy and says it now has operating margins in the "10 percent range" on more than $130 million in revenue.

Actually running the company brought its own set of problems. Among them: It lost its contract last fall to transport severely handicapped students when the city schools investigator reported that 25 drivers had criminal records; and the company was sued by a Queens man whose wife died after an ambulance crew accidentally covered the hole from her tracheotomy.

Harrison says one death is too many but the company has "very, very few patient-care complaints" and works hard to ensure quality care. It also now does criminal background checks on employees.

Robert Ungar, a lawyer for two unions representing fire department emergency medical service workers, says he has nothing against Harrison but is sharply critical of allowing TransCare to answer 911 calls.

"It wound up in the system as the result of a political deal, which deprived the city of tens of millions of revenues," Ungar says, "and in our opinion it's not providing the city with the same level of service that the fire department EMS provides."

Harrison says TransCare meets all required standards and that without it and ambulances from voluntary hospitals, response times would worsen. "The union would like to believe that in that case the city would have to hire more paramedics/EMTs, who would become dues-paying union members," he says. "But the reality is that the city couldn't afford to do so."

TransCare has its own cost pressures, including higher fuel prices and the need to replace ambulances every four or five years, for at least $60,000 apiece.

Every Thursday his company pays workers more than a million dollars in salary, but it takes an average of 80 to 90 days before insurers and government agencies pay for an ambulance run.

As hard as the ambulance business can be, Harrison has lived through tougher times. He was one of eight members of his West Point class who served as lieutenants in one battalion of the 173d Airborne Brigade from June 1967 to June 1968 in Vietnam.

Only Harrison and one other classmate completed the tour of duty; four were killed and two were medevacked out. About 10 days ago his paratroop outfit had a fishing trip in Sebastian, Fla. Harrison says he enjoyed sharing memories over a few beers and even caught some fish.

But his real hobbies at his Connecticut home are bird-watching and stamp collecting, suitable for someone accustomed to the sometimes lonely role of a leader. 

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

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He's an EMT for businesses

Richard Galant

Money & Power

April 18, 2005

TransCare ambulances hired by city hospitals were allowed to begin responding to 911 calls during the Giuliani administration.

does he mean when the voluntary hospitals were allowed to use contract ambulance services instead on in-house or does he mean the bus is on the road and they go right to a call because they are nearby?

[WAS967 97]

The first part.

[Guest NYTruckie]

Parts is Parts. Or is it Parts are Chicken Nuggets, I always forget