No Transport Fees
Prior to 2002, MCHD had had a policy of billing for no transports in which “substantial assessment and/or care.” This was fairly ambiguous and difficult to uniformly administer. Crews were often confused on when a patient might or might not be billed.
In 2001, we responded to almost 6,000 patients in which assessment and treatment was provided and the outcome was a no transport. No transports consume a significant amount of resources from the system and in most cases, provide an important health care resource to the patient. Thus, they account for a significant percentage of the cost of the overall EMS system.
in 2002, the Board approved a recommendation to address no transports. Effective October 1st, we began billing for all no transports in which the patient requested assistance directly or indirectly and contact is made. This is being implemented for several reasons:
1. Standardize the billing process for no transport calls
2. Allow employees to know more definitely when a call might generate a bill
3. Provide a nominal amount of cost recovery for the resources consumed by no transport calls
4. Make a small shift away from the tax based to a user-fee based system
The flat rate established for no transports is $100.00. This rate applies to patient refusals and assist calls.
We do not bill for third party calls in which help was not wanted. For example, motor vehicle accidents that are called in by a passing motorist would not be billed. In addition, we will not be billing for “no patient” outcomes.
This policy was implemented to standardize our billing process and shift to a more user-fee based system.
