By Valerie Bauman
Newsday
COMMACK, N.Y. — The Commack Volunteer Ambulance Corps will likely start billing patients’ insurance companies for emergency services by the end of this year, the agency’s chief said.
“We’re investigating, looking to basically bill for services for anyone, basically a user fee,” Chief Tom Lowenberg said Monday. “We still will respond to every call.”
He said the fee would help the organization, which has struggled financially in recent years, and lower the burden on taxpayers. The nearly 50-year-old Commack nonprofit service is funded by annual contracts with the towns of Huntington and Smithtown.
Lowenberg said the service would not bill residents directly or turn over their debt to a collection agency if they could not pay. Instead, it wants to be able to bill insurance companies, and Medicare and Medicaid, based on the treatment provided.
“It’s going to help protect taxpayers, not cause a problem for them,” he said.
Costs would vary based on what treatment was provided: more advanced life support would mean a higher bill.
Statewide, billing insurers for ambulance services has become more common in the past decade, said Michael Mastrianni Jr., president of the New York State Volunteer Ambulance & Rescue Association. The group represents 176 volunteer ambulance services across the state, and Mastrianni said about half bill insurers for the cost of services.
“It provides municipalities ways of offsetting the cost of emergency medical service,” Mastrianni said.
He said the practice is less common on Long Island than it is in other parts of the state, “because the municipalities are generous.”
Commack officials are discussing the billing option with Huntington and Smithtown, where it provides emergency medical services to residents in Commack, East Northport, Elwood, Hauppauge, Huntington and Smithtown.
In the past 10 years, the volunteer ambulance service has had to take out loans to continue operating, particularly for capital purchases, including emergency vehicles, Lowenberg said.
Huntington paid the Commack Ambulance Corps $491,338 in 2015 and 2014 -- a 3 percent increase over 2012, when the town paid the service $477,027.Huntington Supervisor Frank Petrone and Smithtown Supervisor Patrick Vecchio were not available for comment.
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