In November of 2005, the residents of Colerain Township showed overwhelming support for their Fire and Emergency Medical Services, by passing a 4.34 mill, five year, fire levy renewal. The funds generated from this levy renewal will allow the Fire Department to continue providing high quality services to the residents, visitors and workers of Colerain Township.
In late 2004, during the review phase of the Fire Department’s ten year master plan, we began researching ways to further relieve some of the tax payer’s financial burden. The decision revolved around whether a new tax levy should be placed on the ballot in 2005 or could a renewal with no tax increase assure the maintenance of current and future services for the citizens of Colerain. One such significant means of reduction to the resident’s tax liability was to begin billing the health care insurance of residents who use the department’s emergency medical services.
Healthcare insurance policies, as well as Medicare and Medicaid have built into them the provision of paying for the cost of ambulance transports to the hospital in an emergency. The premium currently paid by you and or your employer already goes toward the coverage of this service. The money set-aside for this part of your health care coverage, if not used, remains with your insurance company and is not reimbursable to you as the covered policyholder. By utilizing and bringing back to the community these previously kept funds that residents were already required to pay in their premium, we were able to justify a levy renewal without a tax increase.
The department has already been billing the insurance of non-residents since September of 2001. A non-resident of Colerain Township can rely on the same Operations rapid response, high quality care, and award winning service that our department employees provide, without sharing any of the burdens for operational cost. It has been a widely accepted practice in recent years throughout the nation to share the rising cost of providing emergency care to the community between residents and non-residents by billing their insurance company a set fee for service when they receive care and transport to the hospital in an emergency.
As of January 1, 2005, the Colerain Township Department of Fire and EMS started billing only the insurance companies of residents that use our emergency medical services and are transported to the hospital. We still retain the established relationship with Medi-Count Management, a third party billing agency that we have used since we first started billing in 2003. The Department of Health and Human Services establishes the reimbursement amount we can receive which is a standardized sum for our region of the country. These reimbursement amounts are based on the level of care the patient needs. If the patient requires only basic life support during transport to the hospital, their insurance will be billed $300.00. If a patient requires advanced life support during transport, their insurance will be charged between $286.51 and $550.00 depending on the needs of the specific patient. Along with these base charges, there will be assessed $ 5.00 to $7.00 per mile for travel from the point of patient pick-up to the hospital depending again on the medical needs of the patient. Generally insurance companies will pay 80 – 90% of the billed charges, leaving the remaining 10-20% to be written off for residents. We pass along the additional amount not paid by insurance to the non-resident in the form of a bill. There will be no bill sent or out of pocket expense to any resident for what your insurance does not pay.
Again we emphasize, we are only billing the insurance companies of residents of Colerain Township that use Emergency Medical Services, to offset some of the tax liability that is shouldered by our citizens. The care and service given to our patients, whether they are a resident or non-resident, remains our number one priority. Questions regarding this matter can be directed to the administration of the Colerain Township Department of Fire and EMS at (513) 825-6143.
Greg Brown,
Division Chief, EMS