2024 Whistleblower of the Year
During its 24th Annual Conference, The Anti-Fraud Coalition bestowed Whistleblower of the Year to Dr. Rayme Edler from Pensacola, Florida. Dr. Edler put her personal integrity first and had tremendous courage and determination to protect patients in Escambia County, Florida despite severe retaliation.
This award recognizes a whistleblower who achieved outstanding results, overcame especially challenging circumstances, and/or brought change to an industry through their incredible efforts in the last year.
Unfortunately, Dr. Edler was not able to join us at the Annual Conference due to Hurricane Helene, but she took the time to deliver her remarks remotely. Below is a photo of Dr. Edler delivering her remote marks and more information about her accomplishments:
Dr. Edler’s Accomplishments
Dr. Rayme Edler has devoted her life to serving others in their most dire times of need, from her time as an EMT, through medical school, and into her practice as an emergency room doctor.
As an emergency room doctor, Dr. Edler would receive patients from the local ambulance service operated by Escambia County. In 2017, Dr. Edler and others began noticing preventable and tragic Escambia County Emergency Medical Service (“EMS”) errors including failed intubations and grossly mismanaged trauma cases, likely leading to preventable deaths.
Concerned, Dr. Edler began attending meetings with County and EMS leadership and the families of patients that had died in EMS care in an effort to discover underlying causes and offer solutions. Unfortunately, County and EMS leadership rebuffed all responsibility and remediation efforts.
A short time later the EMS Medical Director was fired for unrelated conduct, and, with the goal of fixing the EMS errors from the inside, Dr. Edler applied for and was hired as the new EMS Medical Director. Almost immediately, she discovered the underlying cause of the EMS errors: massive and pervasive EMS training fraud.
The EMS leadership had, for years, been handing out false and fraudulent training records for Basic Life Support (CPR for medical personnel), Advanced Cardiac Life Support, and various Pediatric lifesaving courses. Even more pernicious, they were distributing falsified instructor credentials. Dr. Edler set about trying to remedy the training deficiencies and was stymied at every turn by every level of County Government. Instead of spending $50,000 to bring in external trainers to retrain EMS staff, the County instead undertook a multi-year campaign of harassment against Dr. Edler and attempted coverup of the fraud. In addition to the direct retaliation, various County employees and officials worked to destroy, hide, or create additional false documents, delete relevant emails, and generally redouble their efforts to isolate and denigrate her.
EMS staff excluded Dr. Edler from meetings, forged her signature on medical orders and/or protocols and hid vital records from her. Supervisors disciplined EMS staff that were willing to interact with Dr. Eder and reassigned staff to starve Dr. Edler of necessary resources and assistance. Distressingly, the retaliation did not just stem from EMS leadership, but from the county government itself, including one of the County Commissioners posting personal and professional attacks against Dr. Edler on social media and encouraging private citizens to do the same, while also encouraging an EMS staffer that had been involved in at least one patient death to file a meritless lawsuit against Dr. Edler; County staff and leadership coordinated with a private citizen to inundate Dr. Edler with open records requests and file meritless complaints against her medical license.
By the summer of 2021, and after her qui tam had been unsealed and served, the retaliation had become so bad Dr. Edler was becoming physically ill and took a period of FMLA leave, during which time the County fired her.
Dr. Edler’s efforts resulted in real consequences. She made multiple reports to the State Department of Health and filed her qui tam suit. As a result of Dr. those courageous reports, the State of Florida arrested and prosecuted four of the EMS leaders and at least one other paramedic and the County were fined by the Department of Health.
After four years of litigation Dr. Elder settled her retaliation claims for $950,000 and the qui tam claim for $3.5 million.
Award Nomination Process
The Whistleblower of the Year Award and others are nominated by the general membership of The Anti-Fraud Coalition before the organization’s annual conference.
Once submitted, The Anti-Fraud Coalition’s Conference & Member Education Committee deliberate and vote on award recipients.
