By Chris Sholly
The Lebanon Daily News (Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2006 Lebanon Daily News
All Rights Reserved
PALMYRA — Officials from Palmyra Citizens Fire Co. would like to see the borough and North Londonderry Township enter into a written agreement with a local emergency medical services company.
Currently, the municipalities are covered by the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center EMS. However, University EMS has no written agreement with the municipalities.
At the council meeting Monday, councilor Robert Longenecker said fire-company officials have expressed some concerns about coverage by University EMS.
“They tend to favor Derry Township and sometimes ignore Palmyra,” he said. “As a result, the fire company becomes the first responder in Palmyra and gets no compensation for it.”
Fire Chief Dave Dugan said in an e-mail interview that the department wants the borough and North Londonderry to have a written contract with a local EMS to resolve some of the issues.
“UEMS covers most of their own calls, but there are times when their units are busy and another EMS agency has to cover the call,” he wrote. “This happens with all EMS companies.”
Lee Groff, manager of University EMS, disagreed that the Hershey Medical Center’s ambulance service is slow or ignores Palmyra-area calls. The crew’s average response time is between 4.8 minutes and 6.5 minutes to get to the Palmyra area, Groff said. The state standard is 10 minutes, he pointed out.
University EMS has leased space at the rear of the Citizens Fire Co. for its ambulances for the past 11 years, and the station is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he added. UEMS also serves Derry Township, Lower Swatara and Hummelstown.
The service, Groff said, gets between 500 and 700 calls from the Palmyra area each year, out of its total of 10,000 calls annually.
Currently, University EMS does not have a written agreement with the borough or North Londonderry and does not receive a subsidy from either municipality. However, Groff said, the crew has conducted fund-raising campaigns in these municipalities for the past two years.
“We’ve had a fair return,” he said.
For legal reasons, he said, the ambulance service does not conduct membership or subscription drives.
Groff said he and borough manager Sherry Capello plan to meet this week to discuss some of the concerns.
In the meantime, borough officials have mailed out requests for proposals for an emergency medical service to cover the two municipalities.