County Grants Local Ambulance Squads Nearly $5.5 Million

When someone is suffering a medical emergency in Bucks County, a local ambulance squad – sometimes more than one depending on the severity of the incident – quickly arrives to render aid and often transportation to a hospital.

Although many think that service is provided through their tax dollars, those services are often provided by nonprofit groups that rely – often at a level of 75 percent or more – from revenue coming from billing patients and insurance companies.

On Wednesday, the Bucks County Commissioners – two Democrats and one Republican – unanimously approved sending close to $5.5 million of the county’s allotment of $122 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to be spread among the county’s 13 nonprofit rescue squads. The county’s three other ambulance response agencies are run by hospital systems.

In the Levittown area, communities are served by the nonprofit Bucks County Rescue Squad, Levittown-Fairless Hills Rescue Squad, and the Penndel-Middletown Emergency Squad. A small portion of the area is served by hospital-connected Capital Health Emergency Medical Services.

The money allotted to the emergency medical services nonprofits will go toward stabilizing their finances and aid with recruitment, retention, and education of staff, according to Audrey Kenny, the county’s director of emergency services.

“This helps them get to a better position financially,” she said.

In addition to the Levittown-area squads, the Bensalem EMS, Central Bucks EMS, Chal-Brit Regional EMS, Lambertville-New Hope Ambulance and Rescue Squad, Newtown Ambulance Squad, Point Pleasant-Plumsteadville EMS, Tri-Hampton Rescue Squad, Upper Bucks Regional EMS, Warrington Community Ambulance Corp., and Yardley Makefield Emergency Unit received funds through the county.

Evan Resnikoff, the president of the Bucks County EMS Chiefs Association and chief of the Newtown Ambulance Squad, thanked the commissioners for the funding and called it “unprecedented.”

“Among the many things this does for the organizations, it does an amazing thing for the community,” he said.

Resnikoff said an underfunded or a failing ambulance system would create a “health emergency” for the county.

The county’s ambulance squads presently have 21 open full-time paramedic jobs and that number is expected to double due to attrition in the coming years.

Resnikoff said recruitment and retention funding will help tackle that challenge that will faced throughout the county.

Commissioners Chairperson Bob Harvie said emergency medical service funding through tax dollars is often done at the municipal level, not through the county. However, he said the commissioners heard how vital the one-time funding would be for the groups.

County officials learned that 22 percent of municipalities in Bucks County don’t allocate tax funds to emergency rescue squads.

The commissioners have urged municipalities to contribute some of their American Rescue Plan funds to the ambulance squads, but many towns have offered no additional support, Harvie said.

Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia encouraged all towns to look at how ambulance squads in their community are funded.

While COVID-19 strained the finances and staffing for many ambulance squads, those nonprofits have struggled for years due to a quirk in Pennsylvania law that requires insurance companies to send ambulance reimbursement checks to customers. The problem happens when those customers don’t or are unable to send that money to the ambulance squad that served them and is owed the money.

Often, ambulance squads have to hire collection agencies in an attempt to obtain their reimbursement. However, as Harvie noted, those collection businesses take a percentage of any recovered funds.

“That requires a change in Harrisburg,” Havrie said, noting the commissioners have talked to state lawmakers of all parties in hopes of spurring forward action.

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