As we continue to hear about more fire and ambulance companies struggling with finances and staffing, one Centre County company says it is still owed “thousands” of dollars from the state, due to one of its “unique assignments.”
By law, the Pleasant Gap Emergency Medical Services is the primary responder for emergency calls at two nearby state prisons, SCI Benner and SCI Rockview.
Officials say, many times, those calls are to transport inmates to medical facilities.
According to administrators at Pleasant Gap EMS, getting paid for the prison runs has been a struggle.
“We have had months of extremely delayed payments for our ambulance services that are provided to them, in addition to getting those reimbursements for several different reasons.”
The Department of Corrections has a third party company to make the reimbursement payments for the emergency calls.
Officials explain that the DOC also sets the reimbursement rate.
At Pleasant Gap, several years ago, the amount that the organization was owed was over 350 thousand dollars.
Negotiations have since been ongoing, and now that number is just over 50 thousand dollars, but there’s a new twist.
The company issuing the payments has declared bankruptcy, although the DOC says it doesn’t feel that decision will impact Pennsylvania vendors.
Pleasant Gap is not the only EMS service in the state dealing with state payment problems involving prison calls.
“It makes it hard to do a budget; the ambulance committee is working on that for next year. When you take your income, that you don’t know what’s going to be there, it’s kind of hard to make a budget.”
On average, the Pleasant Gap emergency service makes hundreds of calls, every year, to the state prisons.