Fire Departments Can Charge for Medical Response

Harrison County, Miss., supervisors have voted to allow American Medical Response to send a separate bill to patients when city and county fire departments respond to emergency medical calls.

However, a representative from AMR says while Gulfport expressed an interest in this, none of the cities have told AMR that they want to start billing for these services.

The Sun Herald reports the county recently negotiated a new contract with AMR, which included adding a line on patients’ bills for a “first responder charge.”

Butch Oberhoff, a spokesman for AMR, says the company can’t add that to the ambulance bill; it must be sent separately. Monday’s action by supervisors amended the contract to allow AMR to send out bills for fire department response if the cities want to do that.