By Bob Kalinowski, The Citizens' Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
March 23--The president of the Newport Township ambulance service claims the medic company in neighboring Nanticoke is trying to force it out of business.
"I think they are trying to bully us out and take over our territory. That's what I think," Harold DeStefano, president of the Newport Township Firemen's Community Ambulance, said Friday.
On paper, the two companies are supposed to be allies in responding to medical emergencies in the adjoining municipalities. But an ongoing internal feud reached a peak this week, as members of the Nanticoke Community Ambulance filed a lawsuit against the Newport ambulance company.
The departments have a contract in which Newport's basic life support ambulance company must reimburse Nanticoke's department each time Nanticoke's paramedic unit is utilized for a Newport emergency call. Nanticoke is entitled to receive 40 percent of the total reimbursement of a call.
DeStefano does not dispute that his department owes Nanticoke money, but says it is nowhere near the $30,000 claimed in the suit.
"We're going to always owe them money. It's like the electric company: even though you paid the bill for the money, you still owe," DeStefano said.
Nanticoke officials might not be taking into account that Newport does not get paid for every call, particularly when the patient does not have insurance.
"If we get paid -- if we get paid for it -- they are entitled to 40 percent. Sometimes we don't get paid. In the contract, it says if we don't get paid, they don't get paid," DeStefano said.
Nanticoke's lawsuit claims it has not received a reimbursement from Newport since June 2011.
Newport temporarily removed Nanticoke as its first-due paramedic responder in late January because of the feud, instead opting to use Berwick's Medic 95, which has an ambulance based farther away in Shickshinny. Newport Township commissioners quickly changed the protocol back to the way it was after residents complained.
DeStefano said the deal with Berwick would have been better because a paramedic would have been stationed in the Newport ambulance headquarters. The transition had not happened by the time officials returned Nanticoke as the first-due medic, he said.
"Nanticoke was missing calls. They weren't getting money. And they started screaming," DeStefano said.
DeStefano denied claims in the lawsuit that his department refused to let Nanticoke officials review its financial reports.
Efforts to reach Bernard Noreika, president of Nanticoke ambulance, were unsuccessful on Friday.
DeStefano said his company and Nanticoke ambulance officials had bickered about overdue money in the past. They then reached a payment agreement, he said. Soon after the agreement, Nanticoke immediately put another ambulance in service. That hurt Newport financially because it significantly cut down on the amount of times Newport was called into Nanticoke for basic life support calls, he said.
"It's probably better to go through the courts this time than what happened last time," DeStefano said.
bkalinowski@citizensvoice.com
570-821-2055, @cvbobkal
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©2013 The Citizens' Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)
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