Athletic trainer Dale Walston with Forté Sports Medicine helps stretch Larry Rockwell, battalion chief with the Greenwood Fire Department, during a session in Greenwood’s training facility on May 11, 2022. The city is terminating its contract with Forté, which provided tactical athlete services to the fire and police departments.
Daily Journal File Photo
A local union is concerned about the effects the cancellation of a wellness services contract will have on Greenwood’s firefighters and police officers.
The city of Greenwood will be terminating its tactical athlete services contract with Forté Sports Medicine and Orthopedics, which provided athletic training services to the city’s fire and police departments, effective at the end of the year. Since April 2022, the contract has given firefighters and police officers access to a wide range of services — from biomechanical analysis to individualized injury prevention programs to orthopedic evaluation. Greenwood was one of the first cities in Indiana, and the nation, to have an embedded athletic trainer providing these services.
Johnson County Professional Firefighters Local 4252, a union that represents Bargersville, Greenwood and White River Township firefighters, is troubled by the possible effects the contract’s cancellation will have on attracting and retaining firefighters and police officers. Nat Ridge, vice president of the union’s Greenwood district, spoke out about the termination during the public comments section of Monday’s city council meeting, asking council members to do something to help keep the benefits for public safety.
Union testifies
From the second quarter of 2022 to about the end of this year, the tactical athlete program has had 2,891 visits for preventative care, worker’s compensation and personal care, along with other services, according to data cited by Ridge.
The union was first notified of the contract’s non-renewal just before Thanksgiving. This was despite the city budgeting $40,000 in the fire department’s budget, and $10,000 in the police department’s budget, for it next year, Ridge said.
When Ridge reached out to Mayor Mark Myers, he was told the city’s human resources department and insurance company had done a study, which showed Greenwood was not saving money with the contract.
“I expressed to him that I believe that when you took into account the fact that people aren’t going to their personal doctor, when you add in the lost time, when you add in the overtime that’s not being paid out, there’s no way that the city can be losing money on this program,” Ridge told the city council.
He was also told the city needed to save money so they could pay for the additional firefighters for the upcoming Station 95, he said. Ridge says the budgeting for the program is a completely different line item.
Ridge also asked for the numbers the city used to show they were losing money, but the numbers had not yet been provided to him as Myers was out of town, he said.
Ridge says that since the tactical athlete program’s inception, it has been an “invaluable tool” for police and firefighters. They have been able to save the city money by using the program as opposed to using city insurance to see doctors or specialists. It also saves the city on overtime and time off, he said.
Over the past 18 months, the program has saved the city about $845,000, Ridge said. These numbers have been inflated, Ridge has been told, but they would have to be inflated by about 10,000% to still overcome the total number budgeted for the program, he said.
Ridge also brought up complaints about how the program only benefited police and fire and not other city departments. Other departments do not deal with rigorous physicals, work performance evaluations, respirator fit tests, keep up with state and national competency certifications, or attend physically strenuous training, he said.
“This is just one step that helps us get through all of that,” Ridge said.
The union has been working hard the last few years to educate the city council and citizens about public safety needs. However, Ridge alleges the program was taken away by the administration without transparency, despite a promise to be transparent, he said.
“They just told us it was a done deal,” he said.
Ridge reached out to about 60 of the union’s members for testimony about the program’s termination, receiving 25 back — nearly half. This shows how upset they are, he said.
If something isn’t done to keep these benefits, the “revolving door” of people leaving public safety will continue to speed up, Ridge said.
“Even if we aren’t saving money, isn’t the physical and mental well-being of our public safety, first responders worth one-tenth of 1% of our city budget?” he said.
City responds
Of the roughly 150 individuals eligible to utilize the tactical athlete program, only around 50% of them used the program, according to a report compiled by City Controller Greg Wright. Usage rates per quarter varied from a low of 47.4% in Quarter 2 of 2023 to a higher of 56% in Quarter 4 of 2022, the report shows.
About 45 to 50% of visits per quarter were categorized as personal since Quarter 3 of 2022, data shows. This does not include prevention or worker’s comp, which is what sold the city on the program in the first place, he said.
Usage was based on quarterly reports from Forté, while the costs were based on the contract and utilities for the building versus the city’s health insurance data from prior years, Wright told the city council.
Officials also looked at health insurance numbers for the entire city government from the two years before the program to today, specifically claims for physical therapy, occupation therapy, physical medicine and rehab. For the 2021-2022 plan year, there were 38,000 claims, while from 2020 to 2021 there were 27,000 claims, Wright said.
For all the things Forté was saying Greenwood was saving money on, the city was never incurring those costs before, Wright said.
“We had no reason to expect we would be incurring those costs, so it’s not really a savings to us if we didn’t have to pay that out before,” he said.
But a major factor in the termination was the fact that only half of the people eligible to use it were using it, along with that a majority of the services used were personal, not for things that were beneficial to the city, Wright said.
When Forté first approached the city about creating a program, they gave the city the first year for free to encourage them to sign up. The deal was that they would then split the costs of physical therapists salaries and benefits, he said.
“The benefit to them was they could then refer people to their system,” Wright said. “From our side, it didn’t make financial sense when our health insurance will cover these types of visits if needed.”
With the city’s insurance, it’s a lower amount overall to have first responders go through them instead of the city paying both for insurance and the program, said Mayor Mark Myers.
The decision to terminate the contract was both a management and financial decision. While he understands the union’s displeasure, decisions like this sometimes have to be made, Myers said.
“It’s a wants versus needs type thing,” he said. “We are trying to grow the fire department in other ways.”
Funds set aside for the contract are being reallocated toward an already-established rescue squad that has proven to be beneficial, he said. With the squad, the city has plans to put two more people on duty during the day to go on EMS runs in SUVs instead of fire engines, Myers said.
“We’re saving quite a bit of money by doing that, along with wear and tear on the engine,” he said.
Although the program has been terminated, Myers says the city could look at doing something similar in the future when they can find more funding.
