For months, the city of Augusta has been in contract negotiations with ambulance service provider Gold Cross EMS.
Now, the Augusta Commission wants Gold Cross to provide receipts for all instances of a patient being transported to the hospital and failing to pay the bill.
At the Aug. 2 Augusta Commission meeting, the body also agreed to task the Augusta City Attorney Wayne Brown with negotiating with Gold Cross to set up a panel to hear public grievances as a possible measure to levy fines, or withhold subsidies from the company if the panel determines a slow response time for ambulance service occurred.
Under the current memorandum of understanding, the city agrees to subsidize Gold Cross for indigent care, but several commissioners, including District 4 Commissioner Al Mason want a formal contract to be finalized with the service provider.
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A motion made by District 8 Commissioner Brandon Garrett on July 19 to increase the subsidy to Gold Cross, the city’s only emergency ambulance provider, by $950,000 to $1.6 million from the current $650,000 failed on a 5-5 vote.
Augusta Mayor Hardie Davis Jr. was not present at the July 19 meeting to break the tie.
Gold Cross EMS Vice President Steven Vincent says that his company will gladly provide invoices showing how many patients are transported or given emergency care who do not have insurance or are covered by Medicare as long as it is legal to do so.
According to Vincent, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prevents health care providers from disclosing data deemed private and privileged to the patient and from disclosing names to a governmental agency that would likely make those records public information.
Vincent says that Gold Cross EMS would actually have the advantage of proving how many indigent patients they transport if the city would agree to pay what Medicare pays for each receipt turned in, but he remains steadfast that his company has to follow federal standards for patient confidentiality.
This year, the company is projected to provide free services to 13,000 people, which is up from the average of 10,000 per year, according to Vincent.
“I don’t know if the 10,000 Richmond County residents we transported last year would be comfortable with their names and information being publicized that they didn’t pay their bill. I don’t know if the commission considered that,” Vincent said.
Gold Cross EMS maintains the subsidy is vital to their operations due to the high cost of fuel. Vincent said the company averages 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel per month. At the current rate of $4.83 per gallon, that amounts to a fuel bill of $120,750 per month.
In the past, commissioners, including former commissioner Sammie Sias, have accused Gold Cross EMS of neglecting its duty to provide timely ambulance service; however, despite multiple special committee meetings, Sias never was able to provide any evidence of slow response times except during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when fully loaded ambulances were forced to wait outside of the hospital emergency rooms due to no beds being available inside.
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According to a July 2021 article in The Augusta Press, Sias’s reaction to the hospital backlog was that Gold Cross could hasten their response time by leaving patients unattended in the lobby or even the parking lot if necessary.
At the Aug. 2 meeting, Augusta resident and former Augusta City Councilman Moses Todd spoke before the commission and claimed he knew of cases where people have had to wait for over two hours for Gold Cross EMS to arrive on scene, but Todd provided no documentation or witnesses to attest to any such events ever occurring.
Todd’s presentation led Davis to proclaim that if he, as mayor, should have to present receipts to the public, then Gold Cross should be held to the same standard.
Despite the challenges, Vincent says that Gold Cross EMS is committed to serving Augusta/Richmond County and will not be cutting services as the contract negotiations continue.
“There’s no plans to scale back our coverage. We’re always looking at more efficient ways of doing things. We like to replace our ambulances every year. We might not be doing that as often. But we are not scaling back in terms of staff,” Vincent said.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
