ADAMS TWP — As emergency medical service providers across Pennsylvania are feeling the financial pinch, Adams Township has stepped forward to support its EMS provider in the most direct way.

At its board of supervisors meeting on Monday night, Dec. 11, board chairman Russell Ford announced the township would make $125,000 in donations to its EMS provider, Quality EMS, over the 2024 fiscal year.

“I don't think anybody in the public knows exactly how difficult the task is right now for EMS services,” Ford said. “It's easy to say that most EMS services have been hemorrhaging money.”

In recent years, EMS agencies across Pennsylvania have faced increasing costs to maintain operations, a shrinking talent pool, and stagnant revenue and reimbursements from insurance providers.

“The revenue is there when there are calls,” Ford said. “During COVID, they had people on 24/7 working, but they didn’t have calls, so there was a lack of revenue.”

According to township manager Gary Peaco, the $125,000 would be paid out in quarterly increments during the year.

“It’s a donation to EMS. The last couple of years we have not,” Peaco said. “Given the circumstances of the EMS situation right now, the township felt it was necessary to contribute, and hopefully other municipalities will be able to provide some funding also.”

Peaco also said the next year will be spent reestablishing relationships with Adams Township’s emergency personnel — not just Quality EMS, but police and fire officials. This means the township will once again hold quarterly meetings with its emergency services departments.

“We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago just to get all the emergency services folks talking,” Peaco said. “But we wanted a guarantee that we’re going to continue that in 2024 on a quarterly basis.”

Ford said emergency services — which includes EMS, fire and police — take up 38% of Adams Township’s budget.

In addition to Adams Township, Quality EMS serves Mars, Middlesex Township, Valencia, Callery and part of Forward Township. However, Adams Township is the source of most of the calls to Quality EMS.

Out of 2,393 calls to Quality EMS from October 2022 to October 2023, 37% of them — 891 calls — were from Adams Township. The next leading municipality was Mars, which was responsible for 557 calls (23%).

“We want participating communities to pay their fair share, and if they're not going to pay their fair share, then they shouldn't be part of the process,” Ford said. “We can't be handling the burden for everything that's going on out there.”

Conrad Pfeifer, executive director of Quality EMS, was present at Monday night’s meeting.

“This isn’t for us to buy a Goodyear blimp or anything,” Pfeifer said. “This is for these guys to make a decent, livable wage, and have a good quality of life and quality of work balance.”

Ford emphasized that this arrangement would only be in place for one year, and in future years, the residents of Adams Township might be expected to pull their weight in contributing to Quality EMS.

“We are going to be presenting to the public in 2024 an alternate plan where we're going to have to talk about the public actually making a donation to the Quality services,” Ford said.

“I think we're going to have to go year by year to see how things go with the EMS situation,” Peaco said. “There's a lot of talk about a lot of different things, but this is specifically for 2024.”