Read IEMSA's and Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin's recent feature articles on LifeQuest Services.

• Corporate Profile Published by IEMSA
• Corporate Profile Published by Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin

On November 1, 2006 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Final Rule that revises Medicare Part B payment policy for SCT.  The Final Rule will be published in the Federal Register on December 1, 2006.

This is great news for the ambulance industryas the result of the efforts of the American Ambulance Association and its members, CMS made significant extremely positive changes to the previously Proposed Rule. Those changes are as follows:

1. Specialty care transport (SCT) need only be interfacility to meet the origin and destination requirement.
2. CMS has withdrawn its proposed change to the definition of emergency response.
3. 3) CMS has expanded the number of zip codes moving from urban to rural and decreased the number of zip codes moving from rural to urban under the new definition of rural.

To access the Final Rule to check on which zip codes are rural or urban and for other information, please go to the Physician Fee Schedule Webpage of the CMS website at:

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/PhysicianFeeSched/PFSFRN/itemdetail.asp?filterType=none&filterByDID=-99&sortByDID=4&sortOrder=ascending&itemID=CMS1188377

The ambulance section starts on page 480. Please note that it is a 1,418 document and approximately 4 megabytes in size.

Further details of the finalized provisions can be obtained by contacting LifeQuest at 888-777-4911 or e-mail at lifequest@lifequest-services.com.

The Center for Medicare and Medical Assistance has announced that the Ambulance Inflation Factor for 2007 will be 4.3%. This increase in reimbursement to services will take effect for dates of services on or after January 1st.