Fire chiefs have come across a source of federal funding that could more than double the reimbursement they receive for responding to 911 calls for medical emergencies and transporting Medicaid recipients in ambulances.
Currently, Medicaid only pays $420 for ambulance rides, which emergency service providers say more typically cost $1,300. Officials at the federal program are willing to pay half the remaining difference for local governments to provide this service. The local governments would still bear some of the cost, but this new pot of money would bring up their federal reimbursement to about $1,000 a ride.
“A lot of departments across the state struggle to provide the service they’re asked to provide,” said Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue Chief Mike Duyck, who has spearheaded the effort to tap this new source of money, which could bring in as much as $75 million to public ambulance service providers in the state.
Oregon fire chiefs learned of the potential Medicaid money from emergency service providers in California, who were able to leverage federal funding to boost their department budgets even with strained state financing. The program had existed since the 1970s but had never been utilized until recently. Since it’s structured as an entitlement, similar to the food stamps program, the states do not need to put up matching funds to draw the money.