Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Public Safety topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Fire chief and staff defend third‑party ambulance billing, stress staffing needs
Summary
The fire chief and staff explained outsourcing ambulance billing to QuickMed Claims as a revenue-improvement and liability-management measure, and department heads urged the council to preserve critical public-safety positions.
Tim Rockey, the fire chief, praised staff explanations of salary attrition and urged the council to preserve core positions. “That position is very important, and I appreciate the fact that there'll be an opportunity to justify those as attritions happen or as vacancies happen,” Rockey said.
On ambulance billing, staff explained the city uses QuickMed Claims to reduce manual steps and capture additional Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, noting that the contractor also assumes certain coding liability that municipalities find difficult to manage internally. "QuickMed claims took that information and submitted that to ground emergency medical transport so that we can get better revenues," Rockey said, and staff estimated last year’s collection rate at about 90% while also flagging recent communications to improve contractor responsiveness.
Council debated whether to consider bringing billing back in-house and asked staff to evaluate net returns. Staff said the current contract is still in place and that switching would require a careful comparison of administrative cost, coding risk and net revenue recovery.
