Upper Pine Fire Chief Bruce Evans was in Washington, DC two weeks ago testifying to Congress as a board member for the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians.
He briefed the House Ways and Means Committee on a proposed emergency medical services field quality bill, HB 809 and SB 24. "It's a nice bipartisan bill," Evans said. "It was my job to brief them on the benefits of the bill and why they should support it."
The bill is needed because, "Right now, EMS doesn't have a lead federal agency," he told the Times. The federal attorney general represents law enforcement, and there is a federal fire administrator. "But if a school or theater shooting happens, (victims) have to be thrown in a police car for transport."
He continued, "The bill calls for a lead agency to help coordinate from the federal to the state to the local level."
He said there is an EMS office in the Department of Transportation that traces back to the start of emergency medical services in 1966, a response to people driving at high speeds on new freeways and crashing. Before 1966, responders were the tow truck driver or the funeral home, Evans said.
So the federal Department of Transportation created the first EMT curriculum, he said. "But they don't pay our bills. That's Health and Human Services. Most (EMS) systems couldn't survive if we couldn't bill Medicare and Medicaid. This bill directs HHS to look at alternative means of reimbursing ambulance services."
Evans clarified, "Right now, the only way you get paid by Medicare is if you pick someone up and drive them to the hospital. If you are diabetic and we go treat you because your blood sugar is low, we don't get reimbursed. We would have to take the person to the hospital, and they would do what we do at (the patient's) home. That's probably a $5,000 to $7,000 (hospital) bill."
He said some of the meetings he attended in Washington "were to try to convince people to start considering all the things we do that don't require us to take people to the hospital, because you are really saving several thousand dollars."
The bill also is an effort to get more grant funding for equipment, EMS research, and job training to help address an impending national shortage of paramedics, he said.
"We got our first congressman to sponsor it. Sen. (Michael) Bennet is a co-sponsor in the Senate, because of the innovation. ... We have 33 representatives and three senators. Congressman Lamborn (Colorado Springs) just signed on. We've approached Scott Tipton's office. They were somewhat reluctant to sign on," Evans said. He also lamented Sen. Mark Udall's failure to sign on.
The savings to Medicare could be appropriated to fund the bill, he said.
"There's not a lot of lobbying money in this. It's a grass roots effort by EMTs, paramedics, and firefighters across the country."
Evans was in Washington for three days. He noted no fire district money was used to pay for the trip. "The National Association of EMTs paid my expenses."
