By Dion Lefler
The Wichita Eagle
SEDGWICK COUNTY, Kan. — Sedgwick County officials say the Veterans Administration owes the county more than $1.5 million in unpaid ambulance charges dating back to 2014.
The county has provided more than 1,900 ambulance transports to and from the VA hospital in the past four years that the VA hasn’t paid for, according to a report by Sedgwick County Emergency Medical Services Director Scott Hadley.
County Commissioner David Dennis revealed those numbers at Wednesday’s commission meeting.
He said he and other county officials have tried for three weeks to set up a meeting with Rick Ament, director of the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center in Wichita.
“Finally the other day they called and said there was no possible way we could meet with Rick Ament,” Dennis said. He said he and other county officials will meet Thursday with the hospital’s nurse executive, although Dennis said he thinks only the director has the authority to actually solve the problem.
A spokesman for the hospital said management will need to do an extensive record check to respond to the county’s complaint and won’t be able to respond until Thursday.
Dennis said he had hoped to work out the billing issues without going public about it.
“I wasn’t trying to get on them,” said Dennis, an Air Force veteran. “I wear two hearing aids and they’re provided by the VA, so I really wanted to work it out and find out what’s happening.”
He said the county could use the money to expand its network of EMS stations or buy more ambulances, but he’s mainly worried the situation will stick sick veterans with huge bills that should be paid by the government or supplemental insurance.
“There’s a lot of things we could do as Sedgwick County commissioners if we had an extra $1,500,000 available to us,” he said. “But that’s not really my main concern today. My main concern as I started talking about this is about those veterans.”
He said many of the charges are apparently now too old for the county to try to collect from Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance.
Dennis said the charges stem from instances where the hospital has neither paid nor explained why not.
“If they told us they weren’t going to pay us, then we could try to go to an insurance company of some sort,” he said.
But if the county can’t collect, its only alternative will be to bill the veterans directly. Although the hospital is supposed to pay for the ambulance rides, the patient bears final responsibility for the charges, according to a memo from Hadley to Dennis.
Dennis said he thinks that is wrong.
“That’s my heartburn, is if it should have been paid by the VA, or we could have gotten it out of an insurance company, those are the ones,” he said.
Copyright 2017 The Wichita Eagle