WYOMING COUNTY, Pa. — The emergency room at Commonwealth Health's Tyler Memorial hospital outside Tunkhannock is shutting down for good in less than two months.
But officials from one of the largest EMS providers in the area tell us they had no warning.
This week Commonwealth Health announced the emergency room at Tyler Memorial will close on July 1.
The hospital started cutting services last year.
Mike Markovitz is the president of Tunkhannock Community Ambulance Association, a private non-profit that serves more than 6,000 residences.
As an EMT, Markovitz has been taking patients to Tyler Memorial for more than 30 years, taking calls day and night, but there's one call he says he didn't get.
"Zero notification from the Hospital at all directly to us. We're one of the primary care ambulances in this area, and they didn't even call us up or send us a letter to say, 'hey, this is what we're doing.' We had to find out through the news," said Markovitz.
He worries about not having a place nearby to stabilize patients during life and death situations.
"If you're having a heart attack, if you've got something critical going on and you have a patient that's crashing, I'm going to the city now. So, I'm going 25-30 minutes to the city with that patient, and who knows what's going to happen at that point. I don't have an option to go three minutes up the road anymore," said Markovitz.
He's also concerned about more backups at the hospitals in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, where some ambulances have to wait close to an hour.
Commonwealth Health says it will still have an ambulance at Tyler Memorial for transports, but in the event of a big emergency, Markovitz says that won't be enough.
"You can't handle every call. We had an accident last night, five patients. What's one ambulance going to do with five patients? What's two ambulances going to do with five patients? We've gotta bring in four ambulances? The county is empty, and it's empty for three hours," said Markovitz.
Markovitz says the association is already having trouble finding volunteers, even adding paid staff to cover weekends, and EMS providers will need more financial support to keep services going when the ER closes.
He still hasn't heard from Commonwealth Health.
He hopes county commissioners and other politicians get involved.
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