Dive Brief:
- A new study appearing in Health Affairs, which studied Medicare claims data between 2005 to 2009, estimated that 16 percent of Medicare-covered 911 EMS transports involved conditions that weren't emergencies.
- Medicare could save $560 million a year or more if it had the flexibility to reimburse EMS for managing some calls in a manner other than transporting the patieint to an emergency department.
- The savings could be doubled if private insurers also had the ability to do so, researchers note.
Dive Insight:
This data is interesting, but it would be premature to begin redirecting EMS until we have a lot better understanding of what's really going on with patients that didn't need the ED visit. TIt's certainly worth noting that annual Medicare EMS and ED payments for these low-acuity patients is costing Medicare about $1 billion a year. But what if there are other variables affecting who ends up in the ED which might lead to their experiencing harm later? Saving a billion dollars a year is certainly attractive, but it's not that big an amount compared with the Medicare budget as a whole. This situation screams out "move slowly."