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Freeport fire chief urges sizable ambulance-rate increases; council told first reading planned next week
Summary
Fire Chief Cordy told council ambulance billing rates have not been fully adjusted since 2022 and proposed raising resident service fees from $1,200 to $2,000, non-resident fees from $1,700 to $2,500, increasing mileage and standardizing lift-assist fees; council discussed using CPI adjustments vs. larger increases and a first reading was scheduled for next week.
Fire Chief Cordy told the City Council the department’s ambulance rates have not been updated since a 2022 ordinance and said the city is "leaving money on the table" under current charges.
"At this point with a rate of $1,200 ... we're leaving $117 on a table basically at a minimum for every one of the Medicare/Medicaid patients that we haul," Chief Cordy said, citing government medical-transport assistance calculations the department received this year.
Cordy reviewed the department’s current and proposed charges: the resident transport fee is currently $1,200 (non-resident $1,700); his department proposes raising resident calls to $2,000 and non-resident calls to $2,500, increasing mileage from $14 to $20 per mile, and changing the lift-assist fee from a half-hour $145 charge to a flat $150. He said Freeport ranked in the bottom third of 22 surveyed departments on rates and that the department runs roughly 4,000 billable calls annually (about 3,500 are Medicare/Medicaid transports).
Chief Cordy said the department keeps 46% of ambulance revenue and has historically used those funds as a capital-improvement mechanism to replace vehicles and pay for major repairs. He told council the department plans to turn some billing work over to a billing company that would manage ALS intercept billing if the city signs agreements with partner departments.
Council discussion focused on whether to follow the existing ordinance’s consumer-price-index (UCPI/CPI) adjustment clause or adopt the larger fee schedule Cordy presented. Alderman Johnson calculated four years of missed CPI/CPI-like increases (3.4%, 2.9%, 2.7%, 3.8%) would have compounded to roughly a $152.80 increase, moving the resident rate to about $1,352.80 rather than the $2,000 proposed.
No vote was taken. Chief Cordy characterized the presentation as informational and said staff intends to bring the ordinance back for a first reading next week so council can formally consider the proposed rate changes.
What happens next: Staff will return with the ordinance for first reading; councilmembers raised both procedural and policy questions (e.g., whether to apply annual CPI increases automatically under the existing ordinance) that staff said they will clarify in the forthcoming materials.
Attributions: Quotes and data above are from Chief Cordy and council members who spoke during the ambulance-rates discussion.
