EMS writes off over $300,000 in debts

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

A total of $368,901.22 – that's how much debt the Jefferson County Commission recently forgave. Or better said, the commission wrote off the outstanding debts at the request of the Emergency Medical Service (EMS). The $368,901.22 represents money that clients owed the EMS for service rendered and that the department had been unable to collect. The debts, which turned up in the county's last audit, covered the period from 2012 to 2017. The write-off in effect cleared the books, allowing the department to start afresh. As Fire Rescue EMS Director/Fire Chief Derrick Burrus explained it to the commission on Thursday evening, June 6, numerous reasons accounted for the unpaid debts. He cited as an example instances when the department had responded to a death, for which calls the set charge is $600 or $700. “It's unconscionable for us to charge that,” Burrus said, adding that unfortunately that was what the rate dictated. “But most of this in reality is people who are not going to pay because they don't have the money,” he said of the lengthy list of unpaid bills. Too, he said, Medicaid paid only a portion of any bill, as determined by its own rate schedule; and once that portion was paid, the biller had no other recourse. “It's called a balanced bill,” Burrus said. “Once Medicaid pays its portion, you can't bill the patient.” He expressed dissatisfaction with the EMS's current billing company, which he implied wasn't doing an adequate job. “We have a billing company that we're changing in July,” Burrus said. “They send out four bills and that's it. For the last three years, we haven't used a collection company beyond the billing company. Now we've signed up with a collection company that you previously approved. Now, after the fourth bill, it will go to the collection company.” The collection company, he said, didn't charge for its service. Instead, it received a percentage of whatever monies it collected, giving it an incentive to pursue the debts, he said. “We should see an uptick in collections,” said Burrus, who officially took command of the department in January.