Paving the Path to Medicare GADCS Compliance By Sarah DiCicco, MBA* What is the Medicare Ground Ambulance Data Collection Survey (GADCS)? The Medicare GADCS is a one-time requirement established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that mandates all providers of ground ambulance transportation to report department statistics such as expenditures, utilization, […]
LATEST EFFORT TO “FIX” THE NO SURPRISES ACT By Ed Marasco, MPM, CMTE, EMT-P (Ret.) * On Friday (10-27-23) CMS issued a press release and fact sheet outlining the key elements of the new proposed rule governing key aspects of the No Surprises Act (NSA). As you may recall, the two (2) most recent […]
Colossal Fail – ET3! By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CACO, CADS, * What Happened? When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport (ET3) Model as a nationwide demonstration program, I was excited. When speaking with my colleagues in the EMS industry, I gushed how I […]
Sign on the Dotted Line! Properly Obtaining Patient Signatures in the Field. By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CACO, CADS * Can you boast a 100% signature rate? In my 37 years of EMS field experience, I can boast a 100% patient signature success rate…NOT! It’s a joke that circulates between my EMS billing […]
ALERT – It’s Time to Extend the Medicare Extenders!!! By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CACO, CADS, * Difficult Times It comes as no secret to any of us in the EMS world that we are in difficult financial times. Fuel prices are sparking a double whammy on top of inflation to create the […]
RSNAT Prior Authorizations and the PCS by Rebecca Illig, QMC Compliance Manager In 2014… In 2014 CMS initiated a Repetitive Scheduled Non-Emergency Ambulance Transportation (RSNAT) prior authorization demonstration program for certain states. These included South Carolina, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The program was expanded in December of 2015 by CMS to include Delaware, the District […]
AIF Announced for the Calendar Year 2022 By Chuck Humphrey, B.A., EMT-B, CAC, CADS* Second Largest Increase Ever! The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that the Ambulance Inflation Factor (AIF) for 2022 is 5.1%. The increase will be applied to the national Medicare Ambulance Fee Schedule with payments made on claims with a […]
Transported for HIGHER Level of Care By Katie Harrison and Chuck Humphrey, QMC Compliance Team If we had a dollar… Here in our QMC billing office, if we had a dollar for every time we have opened a patient care report (PCR) to read the documentation of an ambulance transport from one facility to another […]
It’s Time to Pay Up! Medicare Accelerated Payment Recoupment to Begin A Whole Year! It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole year since we first were introduced to the terms COVID-19 and the word Pandemic became part of our everyday dialogue. But here we are, one-year later, and the time has come to repay […]
AIF Announced for Calendar Year 2021 Christmas-like Anticipation Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid and Christmas was right around the corner? You probably couldn’t wait for the big day when Santa would bring you that awesome new bicycle, video game or Barbie doll, right? Well, if you’re an ambulance […]
