By Andrew Gaug
St. Joseph News-Press
ANDREW COUNTY, Mo. — As Missouri continues to tighten its proverbial belt with budget cuts, it’s threatening to cut off the resources to one of Northwest Missouri’s most necessary services.
“Super rural” ambulance districts that make up a generous portion of Northwest Missouri, including counties such as Atchison, Nodaway and DeKalb, are dealing with cuts in Medicare reimbursements ranging from $40,000 to $60,000 after proposed health care reform stalled.
Since Jan. 1, super rural ambulance districts have seen a 17 percent to 27 percent shrink in Medicare reimbursement, while urban and rural districts have been cut 2 percent and 3 percent. While they hope the issue will come back to the table, ambulance services are trying to compensate for the loss without sacrificing quality.
“You could be looking at increasing rates, a decrease in available ambulances,” said Barb Shupe, director of the Grand River Ambulance District. “It’s going to affect every service differently.”
Steven Tracy, director of Grundy County ambulance, said its emergency service is facing a minimum $60,000 loss from the Medicare and tax reimbursement cuts.
Even worse, he said he wasn’t aware until recently that it was considered super rural.
“In the beginning, when this all came about, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Since we weren’t charging super rural prices and we’re getting hit with super rural cuts, it’ll have an impact,” he said.
Vicki Gross, ambulance director in Andrew County and a board member of the Missouri Ambulance Association, said the Medicare problem stemmed from legislators not extending the incentives.
“What happened was, so many of the people in Congress thought health care reform was going to go through, they weren’t really concerned with the extension,” she said.
Now the ambulance services, as well as the Missouri Ambulance Association, are trying to bring the issue back to the legislators to see if the reimbursement could be reinstated.
“In the past, any extension had to be done by March 31, so hopefully we’ll know something by then,” Ms. Gross said. “If it isn’t, you’re going to see a significant impact on these places.”
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