MARYLAND BRIEFING

STATE GOVERNMENT

At Hearing, Lawmakers Question Medevac Spending

A legislative panel yesterday questioned whether Maryland taxpayers are getting their money's worth from the state's police helicopter fleet, which transports 4,500 patients a year to trauma centers that release half of them within 24 hours.

The data on patient releases suggest that many of the flights -- at a cost of about $4,000 each -- are not needed, members of the General Assembly's Joint Committee on Health Care Delivery and Financing said at a hearing.

But Robert R. Bass, chief of the state's emergency medical response program, said recent changes have reduced the number of unnecessary medevac rides. Patients within a 30-minute drive of a trauma center must now be transported by ambulance in most cases, Bass said.

Dan K. Morhaim (D-Baltimore County), the committee co-chairman, nonetheless urged Bass to find more savings in the program.

-- Lisa Rein

ANNE ARUNDEL

Oxygen Depletion Blamed For Dead Fish in Creek

More than 100,000 small fish died in a creek off the South River near Annapolis on Monday, apparently after they became trapped in a shallow cove and ran out of oxygen, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Department spokeswoman Dawn Stoltzfus said yesterday that the fish, juveniles of a species called menhaden, died in a cove of Aberdeen Creek. She said it appeared that oxygen in the cove water was depleted at low tide, both by the fish and by moderate levels of algae.

The fish, between three and four inches long, were unable to find their way back out of the cove's narrow entrance, she said.