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 […]
On Drop Downs and Written Narratives- Connecting the Data in our PCRs “Paint a Picture” We read a lot of communication that point to expectations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), State agencies and even Commercial Insurance payers bombard our billing office with all kind of communication about what they expect to be […]
Supporting Upgrades in Care Using Detailed Documentation Dispatched to…Arrived to Find You’re riding an ALS rig today, the BLS crew is tied up and you and your partner are dispatched by default for a call that has been determined via EMD to be a BLS Emergency for a patient with back pain. You respond accordingly […]
What Service is Not Available? Inter-Facility Transfers This week’s blog will focus on inter-facility transports. For the most part, we’ll discuss hospital-to-hospital transfers where the patient has been treated at one hospital but must move to a different hospital in most cases for care that is not provided at the facility where they currently are […]
Documenting Cardiac Arrests for Billing Challenging Scenarios We’re sure that you’ll agree with us that patient cardiac arrests present the most challenging of scenarios EMS providers encounter in the field. Documenting arrest scenarios also presents challenges following the run. Once we have had time to step back and think about the event, that’s when we […]
Influenza. The Ambulance. Documentation. An Annual Topic It’s flu season once again. Given that this blog originates from a desk located in the northeastern United States, we can tell you that the flu has hit here with a vengeance. H1N1 is back to visit and was predominantly prevalent across the United States with influenza A […]
Documenting Winter Weather Related Events Boom! Out of nowhere came the first winter storm of the 2018-2019 season, hitting the Northeast and affecting several of our billing company offices this week. So, while the white stuff is tops in our minds, it’s time to loop back to our annual discussion surrounding how to adequately document […]
Winter Flu Season- How to Document? Holidays Behind Us…Enter Flu Season We trust that you had a wonderful holiday season filled with many WARM memories (and we emphasize WARM!) We’re back to our normal routine so let’s dig into a direct documentation topic…. How to document transports that are initiated either directly or indirectly due […]
Dissecting “The Misunderstoods”- Part II- Billing for SCT Bloggers note- early last year we posted a popular 2-part series talking about a subject we affectionately called “The Misunderstoods.” Because we periodically field questions about these two levels of service and the complexity of documenting properly to obtain maximum reimbursement, we’re offering up the series again […]
3 Reasons the Billing Office Can’t Bill Your EMS Incident Blogger’s Note… From time to time we pick out some of our most informative and memorable blog posts from the past and breathe new life into them. This is one of those posts. The information comes from a poll we conducted in our billing office […]
