Story by Amanda Fries of Spotlight PA<\/p>\n
This story was produced by the Berks County Bureau of Spotlight PA<\/a>, an independent, nonpartisan newsroom. Sign up for Good Day, Berks, a daily dose of essential local stories at spotlightpa.org\/newsletters\/gooddayberks<\/a>.<\/p>\n As municipal leaders in Pennsylvania hold budget workshops for 2026, some have proposed or are considering a tax or other monetary payment to preserve emergency medical services in their communities.<\/p>\n Across the commonwealth, ambulance companies have folded<\/a> or adjusted coverage areas to stay solvent, increasing response times<\/a> and stoking fear over the future of EMS.<\/p>\n The crisis has been called out by EMS providers and highlighted in a study released last year that recommended more funding for Berks County\u2019s EMS. Still, local and state officials have been slow to fully address the problem.<\/p>\n By law, Pennsylvania municipalities need only ensure EMS is available. They aren\u2019t required to fund it.<\/p>\n Instead, services are paid through insurance, whether public or private. But that doesn\u2019t cover the entirety of the cost, which is why providers want communities to help pay.<\/p>\n Less than half of the commonwealth\u2019s over 2,500 municipalities pay for EMS. Elected municipal officials can pay for these costs out of their locality\u2019s main account, typically called the general fund, or they can set money aside using a special real estate tax and restrict that income to EMS or fire services.<\/p>\n Only about a dozen of Berks County\u2019s 72 municipalities have a designated EMS tax. Another 30 communities, the EMS study estimated, pay providers an annual \u201cmembership\u201d fee that ranges from $100,000 to $250,000.<\/p>\n The study by Albright College\u2019s Center for Excellence in Local Government<\/a> recommended myriad service efficiencies and improvements, like creating regional EMS authorities to pool resources and funding, as well as educating the community on funding needs and establishing adequate EMS tax rates in municipalities.<\/p>\n These findings came as little surprise to Western Berks Ambulance Association CEO Anthony Tucci, who has gotten about 10 municipalities to pay the org for services in its coverage area in recent years (some of which will take effect next year). But the report has driven home the need for all municipalities to pay, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s educating the public to where they need to understand that public safety needs to be funded 100%,\u201d Tucci said. \u201cWhile the voluntary ambulance offered Cadillac service for so long \u2014 municipalities were given great service \u2014 now it\u2019s come to the point where you\u2019ve got to pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n The borough of Wyomissing established a membership fee in 2024 with Western Berks.<\/p>\n \u201cCouncil made the decision to fund resident memberships, understanding the consequence of not doing so,\u201d Wyomissing Borough Manager Michele Bare said. \u201cI personally can think of few things scarier than calling 911 for fire, police, or EMS and there being a delayed response or no response.\u201d<\/p>\n The borough of Leesport proposed a 0.5 mil tax in its 2026 budget to fund emergency services for the first time. This would add $50 to the property tax bill of a home assessed at $100,000. Elsewhere in the county, Washington Township officials are also considering an EMS tax, while Exeter Township officials are looking at shifting to that model from an existing membership fee.<\/p>\n \u201cThe staff is currently putting together some options for the Board of Supervisors, and implementing an EMS tax is among the considerations we\u2019ll be tasking the board with,\u201d Exeter Township Manager William Heim said.<\/p>\n Emergency medical services were historically staffed by volunteers, who chose to help their neighbors and community without compensation.<\/p>\n The field began with police officers and volunteers staffing horse-drawn wagons to carry the injured and ill to the hospital or a doctor. That morphed into local organizations like fire companies, service clubs, or funeral directors, providing ambulance services.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until the formation of Freedom House<\/a>, an ambulance service that operated from 1968 to 1975 in an impoverished section of Pittsburgh, that the modern EMS system in America took shape.<\/p>\n Freedom House was staffed by young Black men and women who volunteered as medics in Black Pittsburgh communities like the Hill District. The medics were the first to treat cardiac arrest<\/a> with chest compressions, rescue breathing, and intubation outside of a hospital. They traveled with EKG machines and various medications to use on the scene.<\/p>\n Those services have become more specialized and advanced, necessitating more training for staff, updated equipment, and higher compensation. But funding didn\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n Ambulance services in Pennsylvania today are mostly paid, Tucci said, but \u201cthey\u2019re not funded by the municipalities the way they should be.\u201d<\/p>\n EMS is paid through insurance coverage, whether that\u2019s private health insurance, Medicaid, or Medicare, but those payments don\u2019t cover the entire cost of the service.<\/p>\n Private insurers pay an EMS agency directly only when there is an existing contract in place. In other cases, insurers remit payment to the patient, and the EMS agency must pursue the individual for reimbursement.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sets payouts for those programs, and if the services are denied for a patient, the EMS agency is left with no way to collect payment.<\/p>\n EMS agencies may have endowments that can assist with operating revenue or acquiring facilities. They also host drives and fundraising events to cover special capital projects or general expenses.<\/p>\n Western Berks Ambulance Association this year asked each of its serviced municipalities to help fund a $27,000 feasibility study to determine the best way to raise money for new ambulances and equipment. The study is moving forward, Tucci confirmed.<\/p>\n That leaves taxes \u2014 direct payments from municipalities to agencies \u2014 as the final mechanism of raising funds.<\/p>\n To assist in that endeavor, Pennsylvania lawmakers last year approved Act 54<\/a>, raising the fire tax limit to 10 mills and the EMS tax cap to 5 mills for about 150 boroughs and townships in Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. A bill approved earlier this year<\/a> in the state House would expand that opportunity to more than 1,400 additional municipalities, like Washington and Exeter Townships in Berks County. The legislation has yet to be considered by the state Senate.<\/p>\n BEFORE YOU GO\u2026 If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org\/donate<\/a>. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you<\/a> who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Story by Amanda Fries of Spotlight PA This story was produced by the Berks County Bureau of Spotlight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-33872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}