Refuse ambo transport and you will pay

[wyoskibum]

Basically, if an ambulance comes and you refuse transport, they want to bill you.

Even if it is determined that they do not need to go to the ER with me, should they be charged for it?

Private ambulance companies can do whatever they want. They may or may not be successful in collection. However, it is my opinion that if you are funded by taxes or public money, you should only bill the patients that are transported.

 

[crossatwood]

as far as i know my service only charges if we give meds. in my opinion thats just fine if we don't take you then no pay we were prob sitting at the base watchin "Emergency!" anyway lol.

 

[medicdan]

Does anyone see a problem with how little we know about reimbursement for the services we provide? Do you think this is a good thing? How much do we know about medicare? medicaid? CHIP programs? Private insurance? Do we know what happens to our paperwork once it goes into the run box? Do we know how much each of our "interventions" costs the patient? How much is billed, compared to collected? How much loss is written off by our companies?

 

[Dominion]

Billing is not something i'm interested in. I'm not going to base my treatment off of whether or not I think the patient can afford it or not. If a patient needs something I'm not going to hold off on fear that it's going to be charged out to them. As for knowing where the runs go once they're dropped off, ours are recorded into a system to track the runs tehmselve, the volume, types of calls, and other trending states. Two boxes on our run forms are entered seperately into a billing system to determine how to bill the insurance for the ride. We do not itemize our runs.

 

[Simusid]

We do not bill refusals. I could not look a person in the eye and try to charge them for refusing transport even after treatment. I disagree with that practice (and thats being polite)

 

[Bloom-IUEMT]

Does anyone see a problem with how little we know about reimbursement for the services we provide?

Nope. I've briefly worked for a Medicare Part C insurance company and learned that billing and insurance regulations are very complicated and boring. I have no desire to know crap about it until I actually need to (if I can run my own clinic). The only pertinent info to know is how to correctly fill out forms. The people who deal with billing get paid more than me so let them deal with it.