Capital Health Ambulance Service Will Serve Morrisville, Portion Of Falls Twp.

A new ambulance service will be taking over an area of coverage in Falls Township.

While the Levittown-Fairless Hills Rescue Squad will continue to be the first medical responders for the majority of the 34,000-resident township, the roughly 12 percent of the municipality covered by the Morrisville Ambulance Squad, including a number of industrial sites, will be turned over to New Jersey-based Capital Health System.

Falls Township Board of Supervisors Chairman Bob Harvie said Fire Marshal Rich Dippolito was “very impressed and very comfortable” with Capital Health’s service.

The change over will happen shortly as the nonprofit Morrisville Ambulance Squad shuts down. The Falls Township Board of Supervisors earlier this week entered in an agreement with Capital Health to provide emergency medical response to the portion of the community. Last month, Morrisville Borough agreed to use Capital Health.

After years of service, the Morrisville Ambulance Squad has been overwhelmed by financial issues and made the decision to cease their operations, which are run by paid and volunteer staff.

Capital Health’s Director of Emergency Medical Services Jim Boozan told Morrisville Borough Council last month that his organization was willing to hire many of the Morrisville Ambulance Squad staff, look into buying their two ambulances, and accept their volunteers with the new service. He also said Capital Health plans to use the Morrisville Ambulance Squad building on North Washington Street in the borough.

The around-the-clock service will be “rock solid, dependable,” Boozan said, citing the New Jersey towns Capital Health already covers and its 200 emergency medical service employees.

The Capital Health medics will be able to handle minor incidents and those as serious as strokes.

Falls Township noted in a press release that Boozan assured them patients would be taken to region health centers and not just Capital Health’s facilities.

“You want to take [the patient] where they want to go, where their physician is, where their medical records are,” he said. He did note that in some serious cases, guidelines calls for those patients to go to hospitals that provide the specific levels of care.

Boozan told Morrisville elected officials that Capital Health is on firm financial footing and assured them their emergency medical service is here to stay.

The area served by the Morrisville Ambulance Squad will mark Capital Health’s first full-time foray into emergency medical ambulance service in Pennsylvania. Although, its ambulances have been used to transport patients across the river from Pennsylvania to its medical centers in the past.

Capital Health will offer mutual aid and respond to calls outside its primary coverage area if needed, Boozan said.