Collection agency tackles unpaid EMS bills
Staff writer
Marion County’s ambulance service has found a better way to make patients pay their bills.
Emergency Medical Services has hired a collection agency to handle unpaid bills because office administrator Jamie Shirley could take only take 20 patients to small claims court each year.
The hope is the collection agency, based out of Topeka, has enough clout to encourage patients to pay.
Previously, Shirley focused on people whose wages could be garnished, saying it made little sense to win a judgment against someone who does not a have a job or money.
Shirley conceded there would be times when the agency will not be able to collect bills. EMS asks county commissioners four times a year to write off those charges.
“A judgment does not mean they pay,” she said, “but if they have a job, we go after them.”
EMS also faces the challenge of locating patients who move with no forwarding address.
“People were disappearing on us,” she said.
When ambulances respond to car accidents, EMS often bills the drivers’ insurance companies using information obtained from the police agency involved.
Administrator Mickey Price said that even if a patient died, insurance companies usually paid.
To find out whom to bill, Shirley calls hospitals to which patients are transported to learn whether they might have more insurance than she was aware of.
She tries getting in touch with the patient for three months before turning their bills over to the collection agency.
“If the person is deceased, they look into their assets, and if there are none they give it back to us,” she said.
Those bills are sent to commissioners to write off.
Shirley also touched on transports, and while ambulances do not charge patients choosing not to be transported, they are still charged $200 for certain medical supplies used for treatment, Shirley said.
When Marion County EMS was a volunteer ambulance patients would be charged $200 if a patient called three times over a few months, regardless whether the patient was transported.
Shirley also reported for the month of October the EMS stations in Hillsboro and Marion had a combined 119 patients.