Bucks County to provide emergency services squads with $5.5 million. Here's the plan

The American Rescue Plan Act has come to the aid of Bucks County's emergency rescue squads.

The county commissioners voted Wednesday to help 13 rescue squads, using $5.5 million of the $122 million in funds it received from the federal government. It has until 2026 to spend the ARPA funding.

The funding is critical in helping squads where the COVID crisis caused staffing issues resulting in more overtime payments for squad members who remained on the job transporting patients at risk to their own health, especially before vaccines were prevalent. Some of the money will be used for retention and recruitment. It will also be used for educational support for current members.

Currently there are 21 EMT openings in the county and that number is expected to double in the next three years as older members retire, said Evan Resnikoff, president of the Emergency Medical Service Chiefs Association and chief of the Newtown Ambulance Squad.

"This (funding) is going to help prevent what could be a wider public health emergency," Resnikoff told the county commissioners. "If the EMT system fails, you have nothing ... EMS is the primary health care safety net in the county."

Commissioner Chairman Bob Harvie said that funding for rescue squads should come at the municipal level, but 22% of the boroughs and townships in the county don't allocate funds for their ambulance services and even when they do, some squads are struggling.

"It fell to the county to help them," Harvie said.

Audrey Kenny, director of Bucks County Emergency Services, said there are 16 active squads in the county operating out of 30 stations and they answer 60,000 calls each year, treating a wide-range of medical issues and taking some 40,000 people to hospitals or other medical facilities.

The county funding will help 13 of the rescue organizations; the other three are hospital based and don't qualify for the county support, Resnikoff said.

More:Bensalem to put proposed tax increase to support EMS on ballot

The rescue squads struggled, even before the COVID pandemic hit, with maintaining their highly trained crews because of poor reimbursements from insurance carriers. Harvie said some insurance firms reimbursed the patients and some of these payments don't get forwarded to the ambulance squads.

He wants state law should be changed to require insurers to remit payments to the squads directly, cutting out the patient pass through, that transport patients.

Kenny said the ARPA funds would help the squads as they would be given ''an opportunity to get back to a well place."

More:Bucks County has $122M in American Rescue funds to spend. Why employees got $44M so far

Resnikoff said the funds are being distributed based on in-service time.

"Average salary for an EMT in Bucks County without overtime is $41,000 a year," Resnikoff said in an email after the meeting. A more highly trained paramedic makes $59,000 a year.

"We could not be more thankful for your support," he told the three Bucks commissioners.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County to rescue EMT squads with $5.5 million in ARPA funding