Bedford Raising Ambulance Rates

Bedford Finance Director Crystal Dionne first made the recommendation. Town Manager Jessie Levine concurred. And earlier this week the Town Council also supported an increase to Bedford's ambulance rates.

According to Dionne, the fees have been stagnant since the last bump in 2009.

"For many, many years the council's philosophy is that we will charge the federal approved medicare rates, plus 30 percent," said Dionne. "Unfortunately, over the years, the federal government has decided it will incrementally reduce the amount it approves.

"Essentially, we've been losing ground. We were backtracking," she continued. "As you can imagine, our costs for such service continue to increase just by mere inflation."

Dionne, after significant research and the consultation of the town's third-party billing service, suggested the best course to compensate for current and future revenue shortfalls is to raise the ambulance rate structure to be consistent with the federally approved Medicare rates, plus 50 percent.

Other local communities such as Goffstown, Windham and Portsmouth are currently billing at rates of 50- to 75-percent above Medicare approved rates, she added.

"In our research and looking at other communities and what they charge, we couldn't find a single other community that was charging Medicare, plus 30 percent," said Dionne. 

Levine supported the Dionne's recommendation at Wednesday's Bedford Town Council meeting.

"I concur with the finance director’s recommendation to increase ambulance billing rates to a level that is similar to other communities. Doing so would increase the town’s revenue from ambulance services and would transfer more of that obligation to the non-Medicare users of ambulance services," she said. "However, the town council should be aware that doing so will negatively impact ambulance users in Bedford who do not have health insurance or who have a high deductible health plan in which the deductible is not yet met.

"My understanding from a very informal poll of other communities is that the rate of collections did not change significantly when ambulance rates increased," she added.

Bedford's ambulance service responded to 1,451 calls in 2011 and 1,528 calls in 2012, and Medicare-related calls accounted for 50 percent of those responses, according to a memo from Levine. The remaining 50 percent of calls were either paid by private insurance carriers or by the patients themselves. It's the latter group that will be directly impacted by the rate change, said Levine.

After a thorough discussion, including the discussion of other possible options, the Bedford Town Council unanimously supported a motion, 7-0.

The change goes into effect on June 1.