Shutdown and ACA- What’s Next and How Will They Affect the EMS Bottom Line? History By now, most likely you have heard that the United States Government is experiencing a partial shutdown. The Trump Administration and Congress reached a stalemate just before the Congressional Christmas break stemming from a disagreement over funding for a southern […]
The Power of the “Pre-Auth”! Necessary Evil! The American healthcare picture has increasingly become more complex. The advent of the Affordable Care Act and other changes have ushered in literally thousands of new healthcare insurance coverage options. These options change all the time and each year new plans with new rules and requirements spring up. […]
Historic Election- Now What? You’ve Lived History How many of you stayed up most, if not all night on Election Day? As EMS providers, most of us are used to weird hours and sleep deprivation anyway. Even if you were alerted for a call, our guess is you found yourself huddled around the TV screen in […]
Medicare for All? Feel the Burn After two weeks of the major party political conventions, we can truthfully say we “feel the burn!” Hold on…we’re not taking political sides. Note that it’s “burn” and not “Bern” that we feel, as in “burn out.” Our presidential campaigns in the United States are far too long. After […]
Reimbursement Reality Check The Good Old Days! Remember back about ten years ago when we got those really nice Medicare increases each year? We remember! One year 5%, another year 3; it sure was nice and it helped us keep up with the rising costs of everything that makes our EMS agencies go. With Medicare […]
Documentation Skills and the Long-Time EMS Provider New Tricks You’ve heard the phrase; “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Well that may be true about canines, but it certainly isn’t the case with us humans. It’s especially not the case with EMS providers. Long-time EMS providers should have learned a long time ago […]
Is Your EMS Agency Experiencing Payer Mix Shuffle? It’s happening now… There’s no doubt healthcare in America is being changed daily. The Affordable Care Act (of you may refer to it as “Obamacare”) is changing the face of the healthcare and the health insurance landscape in America. How is all of this affecting your EMS […]
3 Things to Consider for your EMS Billing Program in 2014 Happy New Year! Well here we are, it’s January 2014. Happy New Year! We trust you had a wonderful holiday season. Now reality is back and already first responders across the United States have met the winter monster called “Hercules.” No rest for the […]
Ambulance Inflation Factor to increase by 2.4% in 2012- Part II If the bonus payments go away… You’ll recall that bonus payments of 2% (urban), 3% (rural) and 22.6% (super-rural) are currently being added to Medicare payments as part of the Medicare Ambulance Relief provisions in the Tax Extenders Act of 2009, which was once […]
Ambulance Inflation Factor to increase by 2.4% in 2012- Part I Determining the adjustment… The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that the Ambulance Inflation Factor (AIF) for 2012 will be set at +2.4% beginning on January 1, 2012. The AIF is arrived at by combining two economic indicators. The Medicare ambulance […]
