Medicare program will allow Gold Cross more options for patients
"We have a lot of cold and flu-type symptoms," said Stalvey, a paramedic.
"Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea," said Wright, an emergency medical technician.
Those less acute patients, and the crew that transports them, then wait a long time in the ER waiting for a room, Stalvey said, "and then they are just passing germs back and forth waiting to be seen."
But soon, Gold Cross crews will have more options for Medicare patients. The ambulance service was one of seven in
"Now, we can still transport them to the hospital, we can transport them to an Urgent Care or we can do a telemedicine visit with a qualified health care professional," he said. As part of its application to join the five-year program, Gold Cross had to spell out its criteria for which patients would be more likely to get which services, Vincent said. The first priority, of course, is to make sure those patients who do need emergency care get it, he said.
"The one extremely important thing for us is we are never going to take someone to an urgent care that needs to go to the hospital," Vincent said. "Our first goal is to triage these patients and to take them to the most appropriate facility."
But by taking people who do not need emergency care to a different venue, it also frees up rooms for those who truly need them, he said.
"Right now, your ERs are so overcrowded because everybody goes to the ER," Vincent said. "Now, this gives a us a choice."
It also provides a way for Gold Cross to treat at the scene when appropriate, either with or without a telemedicine consultation, and still get paid for those services, he said.
Under the old system, "you've treated the patient but you don't have any way of getting reimbursed if they don't go to the hospital," Vincent said.
In addition to getting
Often, the patient would like to avoid the cost of an ambulance ride and hospital visit "but they probably do need to be seen by somebody," he said. This provides a mechanism to do that, for Gold Cross to get paid for it, but without the expense of the ER.
"It's going to be lower cost for the patient and lower cost of the insurance carrier," Vincent said.
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