Medicare Payment Adjustments Announced for 2024 By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CACO, CADS* Good News! I love to begin a blog post about Medicare with “Good News”! While not yet formally published, CMS has announced that the “add-on” payment adjustments to the national Ambulance Medicare Fee Schedule have been carried over for yet […]
Extend the Medicare Extenders have been Extended!!! By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CACO, CADS, * The Gift in Numbers… Remember these numbers 2037 and 2454. That’s S2037 and HR2454 as Congress passed these companion measures in a late-year Omnibus funding package that gifts two very big items to the ambulance industry this year. […]
Historic Ambulance Inflation Factor for 2023 By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CACO, CADS, * Great News… The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released great news on October 13th. Transmittal 11642 announced the highest-ever Ambulance Inflation Factor set to be factored into the National Medicare Ambulance Fee Schedule in 2023. According to […]
Medicare vs Medicaid- What’s the Difference? Interchangeable? It seems that often EMS people like to interchange the words Medicare and Medicaid. While similar in scope, the reality is these programs are two uniquely different government offerings. We thought it would be helpful to define the two programs and call attention to their similarities and differences. […]
Dissecting the Ambulance Inflation Factor for 2018 AIF Announced The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the Ambulance Inflation Factor (AIF) for Calendar Year 2018 (CY 2018). Once again this year, the AIF is positive so let’s take a look at how we’ve arrived at this adjustment. CPI-U – MFP = AIF Two […]
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 […]
Small Change- Significant Impact New Year, New Numbers With the New Year comes new changes, especially from Medicare. We’ve all become accustomed to each new calendar year ushering in changes to the Medicare fee schedule. The New Year brings new numbers with dollar signs. This year, for the first time ever those numbers carried a […]
Explaining the Ambulance Inflation Factor This Week This week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced the Ambulance Inflation Factor (AIF) for Calendar Year 2016 (CY 2016). For the first time ever the AIF is a negative value, meaning it will impact the National Medicare Ambulance Fee Schedule by a negative four tenths of […]
Additional Cut Looms for Ambulance Industry More Bad News This week saw more bad news for the ambulance industry. Leading economic indicators are pointing to a projected negative Ambulance Inflation Factor for 2016. It is projected that the AIF value in the New Year will decrease Medicare ambulance payments by -0.5%. While the number is […]
Medicare Ambulance Relief Extension in Congressional Hands Congressional Republicans Propose Relief Extension for 2012 Congressional Republicans have included a one-year extension of Medicare ambulance relief as part of their proposed package to extend the payroll tax holiday, the physician fix and a few other provisions. The American Ambulance Association has also announced that they have […]
