Colfax tables new Rescue Squad billing company switch
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — The Colfax Village Board has tabled — for now — taking any action on switching to a different billing company for the Colfax Rescue Squad.
The current company is not effective and is 18 months behind on billing, said Carrie Brown, village administrator-clerk-treasurer, at the Colfax Village Board’s March 10 meeting.
The result from the delay in billing, Brown said, is $80,000 for ambulance services that has not been collected.
The communication with the company is terrible, and it took until recently to obtain the numbers from last year for the audit of the village’s finances, Brown said.
Getting patient information updated is “a huge problem.” The Colfax Rescue Squad provides updated patient information, but then the company does not follow through, she said.
Brown said she has left many voicemail messages for the company and has sent numerous e-mail messages, and one Monday evening, at 9:30 p.m. when she was at home, she got a call back from the billing company.
Who makes a business call at 9:30 at night? Brown asked, adding that after the call-back on a Monday evening, she has not heard anything more from the company.
The software used by the company under consideration now, Insight Medical Billing, is used by hospitals, so the patient information would transfer, Brown said.
The current company assesses a monthly fee that is calculated by the number of calls to which the Colfax Rescue Squad has responded, and then, once the ambulance runs have been invoiced and the bills paid, Colfax owes 10 percent of the amount collected, she said.
Insight would invoice $5,300 annually for the software and would impose a fee of 10 percent of the amount collected, Brown said.
18 months
The new company under consideration would not go back and bill for the past 18 months, but rather, would go back six months, said Sheila Riemer, deputy clerk-treasurer.
Insight Medical Billing would likely have more consistency because there is one person who does the medical coding, one person who completes the billing and another person who sends out claims, she said.
It is not so much the difference in cost between the current company and a new company — it is that the current company is not collecting the money for the ambulance runs, Brown said, noting that Insight Medical Billing has good references.
The company will send reports to Riemer, and Riemer will have the ability to go into the company’s software and generate reports, Brown said.
“I will do what I can with the outstanding bills,” Riemer said.
The two choices, then, are “write it off” or “go after it,” said Gary Stene, village trustee.
Riemer said that she, personally, would rather do the invoicing the way it had been done before a billing company was involved.
In the past, invoicing for the ambulance runs had been handled by the village clerk’s office.
Third party
At the annual meeting of the Colfax Rescue Squad in August of 2022, Don Knutson, who was director of the Colfax Rescue Squad at that time, said the Rescue Squad would be contracting with a third-party billing service, Cloud PCR, starting January 1 rather than doing the billing for the ambulance service out of the administrator-clerk-treasurer’s office.
It was expected that Cloud PCR would be able to increase collections on ambulance bills, and the annual cost would be about the same as the cost for the billing software used by the Village of Colfax.
The idea of using a third-party billing company for ambulance services was intended to relieve some of the workload in the village clerk’s office.
If Cloud PCR was unable to collect the money for an ambulance run, then the invoice would be turned over to the state Department of Revenue, which was doing the collections for the Colfax Rescue Squad, Knutson had said at the August of 2022 annual meeting.
The state of Wisconsin can withdraw money from bank accounts, can garnish wages and can divert tax refunds to cover ambulance bills.
There is no statute of limitations on money owed for government services, so the ambulance bills do not “go away” after seven years.
WI Dept. of Revenue
A representative with the Agency Collection Programs, Department of Revenue, did a presentation on the State Debt Collection Initiative for the Colfax Village Board’s Public Safety Committee in July of 2020.
The State Debt Collection Initiative was created by the state Legislature in 2009 with Wisconsin Act 28 to help agencies in the state to collect on debts.
The SDC program collects debts by setting up payment plans, intercepting tax refunds, doing wage attachment orders and through bank levies.
At that time, SDC charged the debtor 15 percent of the debt collected or a $35 minimum.
By contrast, instead of charging the person who owes the debt, a for-profit debt collection agency would charge the municipality for collecting the debt.
Agencies signed up with SDC are required to send a warning letter to debtors letting them know the debt is being turned over to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue and that they have 30 days to settle it before the debt is turned over.
The Village of Colfax also has used the state’s Tax Refund Intercept Program for ambulance charges that have not been paid.
If the state owes someone an income tax refund, and there is a debt registered with TRIP, then the tax refund is diverted to the municipality that registered the debt.
In years past, village board members reported receiving telephone calls from people whose tax refund had been diverted to pay their ambulance bill who were complaining that they had planned to use their tax refund to go on vacation or to make a purchase but now they did not have the money because it had been diverted to pay their ambulance debt.
Tabled
Stene said he would like to know what the Colfax Rescue Squad currently is paying for the third party billing service so there could be some comparison with the proposed third party billing service.
With the current billing company, “I’m blind,” Riemer said, adding that she has no idea who has been billed for ambulance services or how much they have been billed.
The Colfax Village Board unanimously approved tabling until the next meeting the two agenda items pertaining to Insight Medical Billing and the suggested software.
Voting in favor of the motion were Jeff Prince, village president, and village trustees Margaret Burcham, Carey Davis, Anne Jenson, Jen Rud and Gary Stene.
Village trustee Clint Best was absent from the meeting.
