Emergency medical services agencies suffered a sharp financial blow during the COVID-19 pandemic as in-person consultations and trips to the hospital declined in favor of telehealth.
Many EMS providers in the region are feeling the squeeze, with some reporting that they’ll close out their budgets in the red for the first time this year. EMS workers and ambulances are, by definition, emergency providers — they are at the front end of the front-line worker category and should be prioritized as Pennsylvania’s state and local leaders allocate and roll out funding from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Looking even further ahead, officials should explore ways to better fund these organizations.
EMS providers rely in large part on trip volume and insurance reimbursement to cover their costs. Some EMS directors are reporting rising operating expenses at the same time as they are experiencing a drop in Medicare reimbursement. Combined with the pandemic, these factors have pushed some EMS providers into insolvency.
In the earlier CARES Act stimulus bill, EMS received funding that dulled the sharp impact from the pandemic. Still, this hasn’t been enough to make them fully solvent. Now, the American Rescue Plan is needed.
The new funding will help plug some leaks but, in the long run, more systemic changes are needed to ensure the viability of area EMS organizations. State and local leaders should use some of their American Rescue Plan funding to do some long-range planning as well as to fund EMS equipment upgrades that will stand the test of time. Some EMS agencies have put off the purchase of equipment and have reduced the number of ambulances in an effort to deal with financial pinches that pre-exist the pandemic.
EMS agencies can mean the difference between life and death when someone in distress dials 911. They must not be allowed to disappear or to become so compromised as to be unable to meet their mission.
Stimulus funding is a short-term fix. Some of the money must be used to develop a sustainable plan for the future.
First Published: June 2, 2021, 4:00 a.m.
