EMS Leaders Discuss Cost Surveying in Medicare Payment Reforms at AAA 2016

The American Ambulance Association (AAA) has led efforts on Capitol Hill to take the initial steps necessary to reform the Medicare ambulance fee schedule. In a session delivered at the association's annual conference, AAA 2016 in Las Vegas, presenters Kathy Lester of Lester Health Law and Tristan North, senior vice president of government affairs for AAA, reviewed upcoming changes to cost surveying.
The Medicare Ambulance Access, Fraud Prevention and Reform Act guarantees that Medicare increases are permanent and will set the foundation for future reform. The act also:

Changes the status of ambulance service suppliers to that of providers;
Collects data on the cost of providing ambulance services; and
Address fraud and abuse with dialysis transports.

Lester and North stressed the need for EMS to be considered care providers, and the need for cost data in order to drive changes to the fee schedule beyond ambulance transport services.
Currently, there is no standardization in cost collection for EMS, and we must standardize data elements so that we can compare apples-to-apples.

Efforts to standardize costs must include small, rural and what the presenters identified as "super-rural" providers. "If we don’t have this data we will not have a strong voice [on the hill]," Lester said.

At the end of 2017, the temporary Medicare increases will expire. AAA is working to make the temporary Medicare ambulance increases permanent.
The increases need to be ...

Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - November 9, 2016 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: MaryBeth DeWitt Tags: Administration and Leadership Source Type: news