Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — The city is ready to increase ambulance fees for the first time in five years.
The Common Council agreed Wednesday to schedule a vote at next week’s meeting on $200 increases in the price of most ambulance services.
The 2012 budget adopted last month assumed there would be a $100,000 increase in ambulance revenue, but the Council hadn’t taken specific action on what the new prices should be.
Ambulance fees are the city’s fourth-highest income source, after property tax, sales tax and state aid. This year’s budget anticipated $575,000 in ambulance revenue.
The hikes don’t figure to affect anyone who has health insurance, Fire Chief Thomas J. Passuite said.
“Patients’ co-pays are going to stay the same; it’s just that the insurances will pay more,” Passuite said.
“Residents won’t be paying more than what their co-pay is, no matter what fees arise,” said Alderman Kenneth M. Genewick, R-5th Ward.
The aldermen accepted a recommended new rate schedule handed in by Passuite and Barbara Parker, the Fire Department employee who handles the ambulance billing.
The charge for a dead-on-arrival call would rise from $210 to $400. A basic life-support ambulance trip, described by Parker as just a “stretcher ride,” will go from $400 to $600.
Advanced life support will cost $800, up from $600. Parker said that involves the use of intravenous fluids, an electrocardiogram or other “invasive procedures.”
Advance life support II, which Parker said involves “more drugs,” will rise from $700 to $900. And mileage charges for trips outside the city limits will rise from $8 to $12 a mile.
The charge for an ambulance visit where the person isn’t transported will remain unchanged at $160, largely because Medicaid and Medicare won’t pay for that, Parker said.
Although most insurers pay the city in full, for nearly a decade the city has had a contractual arrangement with BlueCross BlueShield.
Parker said the Blues pay the city $330 to $480, depending on the patient’s ambulance co-payment level. She said, “We only lose $50 on a $600 bill.”
She said the city made the deal because the Blues used to pay the benefit not to the city but to the patient, and the city had a hard time getting patients to relay it.
“We were in Small Claims Court every month trying to get that money,” Parker said.
She said the city now has a nonpayment rate of less than 10 percent, and uninsured patients can pay ambulance bills in installments with no interest charges.
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