EMS Providers Face Fiscal Crisis During COVID-19 Pandemic

According to a report from Buffalo Business First, it’s not uncommon for emergency medical services (EMS) providers to respond to a calls that eventually become “treat-and-release,” with the patient declining to go to the hospital. However, these calls are also not billable, which means these financial losses must be subsidized by other emergency calls. In the early days of the pandemic, people feared going to a hospital and dealing with possible risk exposure. Although recent call volumes have largely returned to prepandemic levels, EMS providers are still trying to catch up. Tim Frost, regional director for Western New York and Rochester at American Medical Response (AMR), the largest EMS provider in Erie County, noted that EMS providers work on a fee-for-service basis, so transporting patients allows them to submit a bill to that patient. He also stated that, although the providers are expected to respond to 100 percent of calls, only a percentage of these responses are billable. According to the United New York Ambulance Network, the state’s ambulance industry has been among the hardest-hit nationwide. Funding from the federal Provider Relief Fund totaled just $350 million for EMS providers nationwide, compared to $11 billion for rural hospitals. Additional funds came through the PPP program, which awarded 14 forgivable loans totaling $4.6 million to Western New York ambulance services. Consider that 1,709 loans, totaling $374.6 million, were a...
Source: JEMS Patient Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Coronavirus News Source Type: news