Thrusday, January 14, 1999
Ambulance runs to cost nonresidents
Green Township cites higher costs
BY LEW MOORES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
GREEN TOWNSHIP — The township will begin charging nonresidents for ambulance runs to help cover increasing costs of ambulance supplies and equipment.
The board of trustees voted Monday to begin charging nonresidents for the emergency medical service, but it has not been determined how many nonresidents are transported each year by the township's fire department life squads.
Usually, insurance companies of nonresidents will be billed for the service, but no one would be refused service based on ability to pay. The cost for a run could be anywhere from $180 to $400.
Trustee Bill Seitz said changing federal guidelines prompted the township to re-evaluate their emergency medical services runs. Because of federal decisions, he said, hospitals no longer resupply ambulances — once done at no cost to the fire department — with equipment used in transporting patients to hospitals.
“They'd (hospitals) be construed by doing that as bribing fire departments to take patients to the hospitals on emergency runs,” Mr. Seitz said. “And therefore the hospitals discontinued that longstanding and community-minded practice. The net result was to impose those costs on the fire departments, who pre viously got the bandages and the drugs from the hospitals.”
Michael Nie, a spokesman for the fire department, said the department is paying about an additional $15,000 a year for disposable supplies.
“Every time we start an IV, we're talking $7 or $8,” said Mr. Nie.
Mr. Seitz said the trustees emphasize that the change in policy does not affect township residents.
“They're already paying for fire service.”
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