Ambulance Company to Halt Some Rides in Southern California, Citing Low Medicaid Rates
For 23 years, the private ambulance industry in California had gone without an increase in the base rate the state pays it to transport Medicaid enrollees. At the start of the year, it asked the state legislature to more than triple the rate, from around $110 to $350 per ride. The request went unheeded.
In September, American Medical Response, the largest U.S. provider of ambulance services, announced it had “made the difficult decision” to end nonemergency transports in Los Angeles County and blamed the state for having one of the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates in the country. “What’s more,” the company, which sold for $2.4 billion in 2017 to private equity firm KKR, said, “we are not subsidized by taxpayer funds like public agencies, and almost 80% of our patients pay nothing or below cost for our services.”
The company, which also cited high operational costs, said