DELAWARE COUNTY, P.A. (KYW Newsradio) — For years, Keystone Medical Transport has worked hand-in-hand with Crozer Chester and Taylor hospitals. The company provides non-emergency ambulance transport to move patients.
But after an unpaid debt of almost $300,000 owed to Keystone, owner and CFO Todd Strine said they were forced to place that partnership on hold.
“Which is about four months of unpaid bills,” said Strine. “They stopped paying, obviously with the bankruptcy.”
It wasn’t Crozer that declared bankruptcy this month, but its owner, California-based Prospect Medical Holdings. For that reason, Strine doesn’t blame Crozer or its CEO Tony Esposito for the unpaid bills.
“It’s really Prospect’s fault. We have a good line of communication with Tony Esposito at Crozer but he’s really between a rock and a hard place because he can’t get Prospect to name any critical vendors,” he said.
To be a critical vendor means Keystone would be paid even though Prospect was going through bankruptcy proceedings.
“We continued to serve them after the bankruptcy and we asked them to designate us as what’s called a critical vendor which means they would keep our contract and they’d pay us what they owe us and they declined,” said Strine.
He said their inability to provide this service to the hospitals is causing a ripple effect throughout all of Delaware County.
“It’s putting a strain on all of the county EMS because Crozer handles 50% of the coverage of Delaware County and they’re using those vehicles to do what we used to do for them,” he said.
Strine said they are also talking with lawmakers about resuming service, but they are not able to work with Prospect.
Calls to Prospect Medical Holdings from KYW Newsradio for this story were not immediately returned.