Editor’s note: This post has been edited to reflect both correct distance and medical facility names. A previous version said Amberwell Atchison in Atchison, Kansas and MOSAIC Life Care in St. Joseph, Missouri, were 65 miles away from each other, however, that number is incorrect. We apologize for the error.
ATCHISON, Kan. — It was 6:30 p.m. on May 19, and Dan Henson wasn’t ready to die.
“I started having pain in my chest, started hurting, couldn’t breathe very well,” he recalled.
His wife, Roxanne, rushed him to nearby Amberwell Hospital, only five minutes away in Atchison County, Kansas.
Once they got there, the staff tested his Troponin levels, a protein by-product that is associated with heart attacks.
It turned out he had eight times the normal amount of Troponin.
“They said [I] might have [had] a heart attack,” Dan said.
Dan said they told him they couldn’t do anything for him at the hospital. Amberwell’s doctors concluded he needed to be transferred to a unit with a better cardiology department than theirs.
Amberwell doctors decided to send him to MOSAIC Life Care at St. Joseph, roughly 30 miles away, however, the Amberwell doctors didn’t want Dan or Roxanne driving.
“He said, ‘No, you could have a heart attack and die,'” Dan recalled.
“That left me with no choice.”
Amberwell doctors had him wait for an ambulance, specifically one with a paramedic on board in case Dan experienced more trouble.
So they waited… and waited.
“Anxiety is building up a little bit,” Dan remembered.
He knew in the case of a cardiac event, every second counts. The longer the delay, the more likely the extent of the physical damage to the patient.
Another hour passed and still no ambulance. However, Roxanne believed it was better than driving themselves with no medical monitoring.
“If we had him unhooked, we were taking a chance,” she told FOX4.
Then a third hour passed… then a fourth.
Dan was resigned.
“When they tell you you could die, you just keep waiting,” he said. “That’s all you can do.”
Finally, at 1 a.m. – after five hours of waiting – a paramedic-equipped ambulance showed up.
“They finally get there,” Dan said. “I’m thinking I’ve got a shot at survival.”
So, what took the ambulance so long to get there?
“I said if I make it through this, what I got to do is find out why,” Dan told FOX4.
Amberwell Atchison sourced the ambulance from Topeka, Kansas, about 50 miles away.
On top of that, according to Dan, before the ambulance could go to Atchison County, it had a call to service for someone at the University of Kansas.
In the end, he made it to MOSAIC Life Care in St. Joseph. But both Dan and Roxanne believe their long wait wasn’t right.
“There’s other people that’s going to be maybe not as strong as I was, or a little weaker than I was.”
So, the Hensons asked the FOX4 Problem Solvers to investigate.
Atchison County EMS chief says they never got the call to transfer Dan
It didn’t take long to identify one problem that night: Confusion.
Neither the county nor Amberwell were willing to speak on-camera with FOX4 about the incident.
But as far as Atchison County goes, there are recordings of the county commissioners’ meetings. At one July meeting, they discussed the incident.
“Just to be clear, there wasn’t a paramedic,” one commissioner said about the ambulances they had on duty that night.
But Atchison County EMS Chief Corey Scott eventually denied that claim.
He told the FOX4 that on the night in question, the county had two available ambulance, each with a paramedic.
Scott also told us that county EMS never received “a call to complete a patient transfer from Amberwell.”
FOX4 Problem Solvers reached out to Amberwell Health for comment.
A spokesperson told us that they “do not comment on internal operations or protocol discussions, particularly when tied to individual situations.”
Dan said he just hopes what happened to him doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“This is life and death,” he said.
Scott told us that there have been changes since Henson’s incident and FOX4’s investigation.
“Following internal discussions with Amberwell and Mosaic, those facilities adjusted their internal decision-making about when to require a paramedic be on the ambulance for a transfer,” the Atchison County EMS chief said.
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