No Hazard Pay For County EMS Workers While Some Buy Their Own PPE

CHESTER COUNTY, PA — EMS workers across Chester County were denied hazard pay drawn from the federal CARES Act, and dispersed at the state level.

As hazard pay grant awardees were named last week, the state's ambulance association pointed out that not one EMS agency in Pennsylvania received hazard pay.

But advocates including the state Ambulance Association and a state representative are working on actions to support the essentials workers who couldn't collect unemployment, but have kept answering emergency calls since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Lenny Brown, Public Information Officer for Royersford Fire Department and Lt. at Good Fellowship Ambulance Club of West Chester said the Personal Protective Equipment required are mandated.

"That money is coming out of our pocket," he said. "Chester County has supplemented but it's not enough to sustain the need long term. What we need is the money for supplies."

"Our staff did not receive hazard pay," Royersford Fire Department said today. "We did apply for funding and did not receive anything from the CARES Act monies. We've received contributions from the community and a few organizations for PPE but nothing from the state directly allocated for compensation."

"Everybody's scrambling for the same masks," Brown explained. "One provider said they sold 10 years worth of gloves in 2 weeks. Basic medical supplies are all back ordered, plus schools and business are also scrambling to get the same materials right now."

Brown said it's been easy for emergency responders to be overlooked because they are people who are always going to show up for their shifts.

"No one gets into this to make money. These are people who want to help the community," he said. But, he added, "For not one ambulance association to be named for hazard pay, it shows we've been overlooked."

East Whiteland Fire Company reported that neither they, "nor any of the area agencies in Chester County received any sort of hazard pay from the state during the pandemic."

At a July 30 event to recognize emergency responders, Gov. Tom Wolf had lauded the important front line work of EMS responders.

"During the pandemic, our emergency responders have become more important than ever," Wolf said. "They have been out on the front lines of this fight, helping attend to COVID-19 patients in their most dire time of need. They have had to adapt their practices to keep themselves and their patients safe, all while continuing to serve as a lifeline to their communities and support the health care system," the governor said.

In a follow-up, the State Ambulance Association issued an open letter to Wolf on Aug. 18 accusing the governor of using emergency responders merely as political props, dishing out praise but not offering help.

"EMS is continually responding and constantly forgotten," the letter said, as it called on individual EMS workers to contact their own legislators and the governor and ask for action.

President of the Ambulance Association of Pennsylvania, Dean A. Bollendorf, said that while the visit and remarks at that time were appreciated, the Wolf Administration and the PA General Assembly have shown by subsequent actions that "essential frontline EMS providers in this war on the pandemic are merely political talking points."

Brown explained that there are reasons that the hazard pay grants might have been difficult to disperse within agencies. The pay was designated for workers making less than $20 per hour.

Emergency Medical Technicians in Chester and Montgomery counties make $16-18 an hour, according to Brown. But, there are different levels of EMT's and advanced level EMT's will make $17-19 an hour, because they do some things that full paramedics do. Paramedics make $20-24 per hour, and Pre-hospital Registered Nurses (PHRN) will make $20-24 per hour.

Brown explained that the emergency team all works together and it would be difficult to give an EMT hazard pay, and not the other person working right next to them. Also, he said, pay varies from county to county.

Still, he defends the worthiness of emergency workers for hazard pay and for more recognition of the challenges they have stepped up to. "It was a shock to the system at first; the idea that there are infectious diseases out there. This is a new normal, getting used to putting on the PPE. The EMS workers have done a great job adapting."

And adaptation is not the only challenge. "We have families, so if we're exposed, we're taking it home," Brown said. "We didn't get unemployment. We were designated essential workers, we went to work, and were potentially exposing our families."

State Rep. Joe Ciresi State Rep. (D-Montgomery) on Aug. 19 called for an additional round of hazard pay funding to assist first responders and other frontline workers who were not included in hazard pay grants announced by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development this week.

"While the recent hazard pay grants provided important support to many of our frontline heroes, we need to do more," Ciresi said. "Unfortunately, due to program guidelines and funding limitations, many of those putting themselves in harm’s way were left out, including firefighters and EMS. We have a responsibility to them—as fellow Pennsylvanians—to honor their long-term sacrifices and risks with financial assistance."

House Bill 2538, introduced by Rep. Jason Ortitay, (R-Allegheny/Washington) and cosponsored by Ciresi, would create a $500 million "Financial Assistance for Front Line Workers Program" to support firefighters and EMS personnel, police officers, healthcare and grocery store workers, and other frontline employees. The federal HEROES Act would also establish a $200 billion "Heroes' Fund" to provide hazard pay to certain essential workers.

Another way emergency response workers stepped up, locally, was to create a system that would allow them to keep working, while wondering who might have been exposed. Brown said the departments he works with began wearing green wristband to indicate that you passed temperature check and questionaire. He said it became necessary in a day's work.

"Nursing homes would stop you at the door, while someone needed emergency care. We'd stand there answering questions," said Brown. "Now we have a solution. The wristbands means 'We're taking you at your word, your screen is good.'"

The wristband visual turned into a county initiative, as agencies showed good faith in each other's practices.

"Chester County has done a phenomenal job as far as information, directives, helping emergency agencies who were figuring out how to do this," Brown said. He praise Chester County for being "leaps and bounds ahead of others around us. The county is sending daily briefings, trends, funds, reports on supplies."

"The directive always is always to use our local vendors first," Brown explained, but he said if Good Fellowship runs out from its usual supply chains, it can turn to the county in hopes that a supply of needed items can be identified.

"We had a stockpile of N95 masks from 2 years ago, we were in a good spot and were able to donate and help other agencies in need early on." But, there have been times more recently, when "we were down to our last handful."

Chester County Department of Health took on Delaware County, he explained, saying it has made the response better everywhere.

The head of Pennsylvania's Ambulance Association said it was a failure of the Department of Community and Economic Development that no EMS agency in the state received any portion of the Governor's Hazard Pay Grant. Bollendorf said the DCED has wrongly assumed that EMS workers would be included in other funding. But, that did not happen.

"The Hazard Pay Grant was an opportunity to help EMS Agencies compensate our EMS providers for the daily physical and emotional toil of fighting this pandemic. EMS providers do not only treat COVID-19 and other patients but are an essential keystone in preventing the spread of the virus to other patients and the hospital system through proper infectious control procedure and relentless sanitization," Bollendorf said .

The Ambulance Association's open letter said (caps in original letter):

• "EMS providers are essential workers who are the frontline of this pandemic
• EMS providers face the highest exposure to asymptomatic, presumptive and positive COVID-19 patients on EVERY CALL, EVERY DAY
• EMS providers have contracted COVID-19 and several in this Commonwealth have DIED
• EMS providers are some of the lowest paid healthcare workers fighting this pandemic
• EMS Agencies have struggled financially from lost revenue, daily increased PPE costs and increased payroll costs."

Send Feedback