Medicare Data Collection System for Ground Ambulance Providers
New Start Date is January 1st, 2021!!!
Effective January 1, 2020 (Delayed for one year due to CoVID-19) and continuing through 2024, ground ambulance providers and suppliers that have been selected to participate in the Medicare Ground Ambulance Data Collection System must collect information on cost, utilization, revenue, and other service characteristics in accordance with the Medicare Ground Ambulance Data Collection Instrument for a continuous 12-month period. The information collected will be used to evaluate the extent to which reported costs relate to payment rates under the Medicare Part B Ambulance Fee Schedule (AFS), as well as to collect information on the utilization of capital equipment and ambulance capacity, and the different types of ground ambulance services furnished in different geographic locations, including rural areas and low population density areas (super rural areas). Failure to sufficiently submit the required information will result in a 10 percent reduction to payments under the Ambulance Fee Schedule for one year, unless a hardship exemption has been granted or an informal review has determined that your organization is not subject to the 10 percent reduction to payments.
List of Ambulance Providers Chosen for 2021: Download Spreadsheet Here! (You will need to extract the files onto your computer hard drive.)
For the first year of this program, Medicare selected 2663 ambulance providers from across all fifty states and territories, many of these providers are from small rural communities. It is imperative to know if your agency was chosen. Failure to comply will result in a 10% reduction in Medicare payments. Smaller Medicare payments may mean smaller coinsurance payments as well. It is yet to be seen if this penalty will apply to other Medicare carriers such as UMWA and RailRoad Medicare.
Of course, you do not have to navigate this problem alone.
Let Priority Medical Claims help you protect your Medicare cashflow. We are preparing to work with EMS agencies of all types as a separate consulting project. 25% of the ambulance companies currently enrolled with Medicare will have to begin data reporting on January 1st of 2021. Each year, another 25% of enrolled Medicare EMS providers will be selected…until everyone in the industry is reporting cost data to Medicare.
We have been in business since 1995, helping small EMS agencies succeed for decades. Call us today at 1-800-635-7577 and ask to speak with Keith Waycaster, a former Paramedic and ambulance billing expert.
