By Patrick Lester
Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2007 The Morning Call, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Dublin Regional EMS, an ambulance company beset by financial struggles since it opened in 2002, abruptly went out of business this month.
The Dublin-based nonprofit closed its doors May 11, just weeks after it was evicted from its Main Street headquarters and found a temporary home in the borough. The organization apparently has no plans of reopening, based on statements by a state official.
It’s the second Upper Bucks ambulance squad to close in the past two months. Nearby Perkasie Community Ambulance, which has had its share of financial and management woes in recent years, was shut down in mid-March and has not reopened.
Dublin Regional leaders have told Bucks County officials that they plan to give their ambulance to another organization, said Joe Schmider, director of the state Health Department’s Emergency Medical Services Bureau.
Schmider’s department received official notice of Dublin Regional’s closure Monday.
Officials from the organization did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Dublin’s closure came about a month after the squad’s chief said the group was on an “upswing” despite its funding problems and the fact that it had to lay off employees.
It came at a time when an expert on emergency medical services is preparing to issue recommendations on how to best provide ambulance services in Upper Bucks.
Without a Dublin-based squad, other ambulance companies have been responding to the area it generally covered -- Dublin and parts of Bedminster, East Rockhill, Hilltown, New Britain and Plumstead townships.
The closest companies -- Point Pleasant-Plumsteadville and Central Bucks -- are five and 5.7 miles away, respectively. The others are between eight and 18 miles away.
Chalfont and Upper Bucks Regional EMS will respond to Dublin’s area as well.
“It’s going to add some minutes [to response times],” Schmider said, adding that 4 percent of emergency calls are life-and-death circumstances.
“Across the board, we all need to recognize EMS is a valuable service,” he said. “Is [a 10-minute response time] OK? Is two minutes? It’s going to take that community involvement to make that determination.”
Dublin Regional was staffed only about seven hours per day, on average, between January and March, according to Bucks County records. That was down significantly from 2006, when it was in service an average of 19 hours a day for the year. Since it was a basic service without a paramedic or prescription drugs aboard its ambulance, it was not required to be staffed around the clock.
The squad was never able to generate enough emergency calls to make enough money to pay its staff. It responded to about 400 emergencies annually, Schmider said.
It also had its share of management changes over the years. In April, the squad was forced out of the building it leased because owner Wachovia Bank was in the process of selling it.
Mike Stebulis, the company’s chief, summed up the organization’s struggles during a March interview.
“This business is really a double-edged sword,” he said. “If we put people on 24 hours a day and don’t run calls, we’re paying people to sit here. If we don’t put people on and miss calls, we don’t make any money.”
Dublin Regional was formed in early 2002 after the Dublin Fire Company closed down its 57-year-old ambulance service at the end of 2001. The fire company’s members voted overwhelmingly to disband the ambulance corps, which the company said had been losing about $30,000 annually.
The new ambulance service, which went through several directors, didn’t fare much better during its brief history.
The organization generated $159,078 in revenues in 2004 and spent $149,333, finishing the year with total assets of $76,737, according to tax returns filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue service. About 50 percent of its spending went toward salaries.
The group’s 2005 and 2006 tax returns were not available, but both the decline in its in-service hours and its layoffs were indicators of its troubles.
The state of ambulance services in Upper Bucks has been the subject of an ongoing study in recent months. Everitt Binns of Binns and Associates of Kutztown plans to release his recommendations to improve those services in the coming weeks.