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 […]
Hurricane Dorian Prompts CMS Emergency Efforts Breaking News Literally, as we contribute to this blog space, our fellow Americans in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic States are experiencing the dramatic effects of the monster Hurricane Dorian. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has just issued Medicare Learning Network (MLN) Special Editions (SEs) 19017 (Puerto Rico), […]
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 […]
4 Important Things EMS Field Practices to Aid Billing Billing is Important! As an EMS provider in the field, if you think you can ignore what goes on in the office- especially the billing part- then you don’t see the bigger picture. Billing is important! Modern EMS is expensive. Most trucks are now a 6-figure […]
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 […]
Other Methods of Transportation are Contraindicated Medical Necessity Defined We talk a lot about Medical Necessity in the ambulance billing office. Medical necessity and Reasonableness are key in determining whether or not an insurance payer is obligated to pay for ambulance transport, especially for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Title XVIII of the Social Security Act […]
Clear. Clinical. Documentation. Bloggers note- we posted this blog almost a year ago to the day. It’s one of those topics that never gets old and the information remains as important as it was the first day we posted it. All of us must keep this important concept in mind when documenting our EMS transports. […]
Mixing Business and Billing: EMS Documentation Impact on Billing and Reimbursement Periodically we re-post useful information authored by those we respect in the industry. Recently, Dan Pedersen of Page, Wolfberg and Wirth (www.pwwemslaw.com) shared this excellent posting on EMS1.com. The post is filled with great information regarding EMS documentation and its impact on billing and reimbursement. We […]
