Proposal for countywide billing of ambulance service on table

The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors could vote on countywide billing for ambulance service from rescue squads as early as next month.

The board’s Fire & Rescue Police & Procedures Committee will make the recommendation during its Dec. 7 meeting that the board approve billing patients for medical transport starting in 2010, said Callands-Gretna Supervisor Fred Ingram, the committee’s chairman.

Supervisors will hold their regular meeting at 7 p.m. Dec. 7, just two hours after the committee’s meeting begins. Ingram said the board will vote on it that night.

At a glance
• Pittsylvania County has 14 rescue providers, including the squads in Altavista and Danville. The county also pays Regional One — which bills patients — $70,000 per year to provide backup service. The other providers are Gretna, Chatham, 640 and Cool Branch rescue squads and Ringgold, Tunstall, Mount Cross, Mount Hermon, Blairs, Callands, Laurel Grove and Brosville fire and rescues.
• Chatham and Gretna currently bill on their own.

Chatham-Blairs Supervisor Hank Davis, who’s on the board’s Fire/Rescue Advisory Board, said the change would level the field for patients in Pittsylvania County where some pay for their trips to the emergency room and others don’t. Most of the county’s ambulance-service providers give free transport for patients, while others, such as Chatham’s rescue squad, bill for services.

“It needs to be all one way or all the other way,” Davis said Saturday. The county has been working to establish a fee-for service system for eight years, said Davis, who has pursued the change for six.

The ordinance would establish a countywide billing system for ambulance service and a back-up service, Ingram said.

Revenues from billing would go into an enterprise fund in the county treasury. The money would pay for the backup emergency service and equipment for rescue squads.

Ingram said the change would reduce the patient’s cost for transport. The typical charge for billed service is about $900 while the proposed system would cut the cost by as much as half, Ingram said. Patients and/or their insurance providers, including private insurers, Medicare and Medicaid, would be billed.

The system would be self-generating and would not impact the county’s budget, Ingram said.

Kenny Hudson, chief of Tunstall Fire & Rescue, said he supports the ordinance and that representatives from the county’s rescue agencies will meet Tuesday to discuss the proposal. Hudson said some rescue squads in the county are unsure about the idea, whether it will make money and how it will affect donations to rescue agencies.

“We’re going to have to see how things go and see how the public feels about it,” said Hudson, who’s also vice president of the Pittsylvania County Fire & Rescue Association.

Some of the squads may not participate, Ingram said. Chatham and Gretna already bill on their own, Ingram said.