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TO: Mayor Richard C. Irvin
FROM: Christopher Minick, Chief Financial Officer/City Treasurer
David McCabe, Fire Chief
DATE: November 04, 2024
SUBJECT:
Recommendation to Amend Ambulance User fees.
PURPOSE:
To authorize the Chief Financial Officer to annually adjust ambulance user fees based on data provided by the Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT) program through the State of Illinois. This approach allows the City to better align its revenue structure to recover the actual costs of providing ambulance service.
BACKGROUND:
Resolution R16-030 enabled the Chief Financial Officer to adjust the City of Aurora ambulance user fees to be equal to an average of other municipal provider's fees as reported in the Naperville survey. This was done without regard to our own costs to provide ambulance services.
In late 2019 and early 2020 the State of Illinois, working with the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association (IFCA) enacted a new program involving the use of federal funding (Medicare/Medicaid) to subsidize/support Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT) providers. The City of Aurora completed all applications for this program and began receiving funds in 2020.
As part of our continued participation in the GEMT program, an annual cost report must be submitted to the Department of Healthcare and Family Services by early October of each year. The GEMT Cost Report is a retrospective analysis of expenditures and EMS transports for the previous calendar year that directly determines the Average Cost per Transport (Attachment 1 GEMT Cost Report, Schedule 9, Line 9) for the City of Aurora.
DISCUSSION:
In reviewing our rates and the rates of other Illinois communities we have found that Aurora rates are substantially less than our comparable communities (Attachment 2, Table 1). As noted in the tables, our current rates are less than our comparable communities with an average difference of $577.64 for non-resident rates and $1,340.98 for resident ra...
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