Hi all,
My father is a nursing home resident. He is going to be transferred to another nursing home that is closer to the family. The nursing home wants the family to pay for the ambulance service or else my father will not be transferred to the new nursing home. We asked for them to submit the bill to his insurance company but they said it doesn't work that way. Are ambulance and/or ambulette services covered through insurance (Medicaid Managed Long Term Care and Medicare) when nursing home resident gets discharged from one nursing home to transfer to another nursing home? He lives in the state of NY and one thing I know for sure is that Medicaid definitely pays for transportation when the member has a medical appointment and needs to go to a doctor/hospital.
Thank you for reading, all responses are greatly appreciated.
There are also private medical transport companies, cheaper than ambulance I am sure. It all depends on how medically involved he is. Can he sit in a wheelchair? Then he could go with a nurse and insurance in a wheelchair transport van-you only really need an ambulance if he is connected to IVs, tubes, wires, needs a cardiac monitor and all that for the trip -if you have a decent plan- will cover that much cheaper with no payment by you. (We have United).
Edit: I would love to have taken him myself to nursing home2 but he had to be on a stretcher.
Emergency, they would transport, bill insurance, what insurance did not cover, they would bill her for the rest. Mind you, even with the less than 5 mile distance, the cost was still high, with the added insult of the high cost per mile for transport.
If you go with your loved one on an emergency transport, one of the the first things the EMTs will ask when they are loaded in the ambulance is for the SSN to be able to bill insurance.
Hospitals are big business, plain and simple, and other businesses want a piece of the pie.
Don't expect to get them to pay for any out of state transfer.(You did not specify if that was the case or not)
A few years ago my mother had an appointment with a dentist literally across the street from the nursing home. My sister and I got her into her wheelchair and pushed it the few hundred feet to the dentist!
Just like a spoiled child that isn't getting their way.
Family could do the transport at no cost other than gas, time and lodging if necessary.
Since this move is to be closer to family, I wonder where is he and where will be be going? What is the distance that he will be moving?
Pay for it, It is Not that Expensive and Dad has to Go ASAP.
I am not sure there would be a code to bill for that. If a facility doesn’t have an ICD10 code or a CPT code to bill for a medically justifiable expense, they won’t bill because they won’t get paid. Thus why I do not think his current nursing home will assume responsibility for payment as they may not get their money back. Why should they, when you think of it? It’s a voluntary transfer.