Products & Services

AMBULANCE FEE SCHEDULE AND SWEET VERSION 5.4 RELEASE
By Dan Voss, Product Manager

Congress recently overrode a Presidential veto on a bill that provides more money for ambulance transports provided to Medicare recipients under the ambulance fee schedule. This increased reimbursement is retroactive to July 1, 2008.
This increase in reimbursement rates affects the Sweet-Billing program when using contractual adjustments, payments per charge for Medicare payments, ALS/BLS Splits Reporting Module, Medicare Remittance Advice, or any of the following forms:

• Michigan MHBC 1500 Medicaid Claim Adjustment
• New York Medical Assistance Claim form A
• New York Medical Assistance/Prior Approval Request
• Oregon OMPA 505 Medicaid Crossover
• Georgia 19 Medicaid Crossover
• Ohio ODHS 6780 Medicaid Crossover
• Pennsylvania MA319C Medicaid Crossover

Following the legislative action, CMS has now published the new rate information, and we expect to have support for this temporary increase in the Industry Service pack by Friday, August 15. In addition to applying the Industry Service Pack, you will also need to update the Fee Schedule mileage rates in Utilities>Database setup. Documentation on this setup and the release of the Industry Service Pack containing the new calculations will be announced on the web site next week. 

To get the new ISP once it is announced: log into support and select the "Download Center" item from the orange menu across the top of the page. Click on the "Ortivus Software Updates" button and scroll down to the "INDUSTRY SERVICE PACK" section, which will guide you through the remaining steps.

The new calculations are also included in Sweet-Billing and Sweet-Field Data Version 5.4 release, which is currently moving into the pre-release alpha and beta testing phases. Watch the “Download Center” page of the website for availability of this new release.
In my last OrtivusTALK article, I highlighted a couple of major new features that are being introduced into Sweet-Field Data in Version 5.4. There are many smaller enhancements and fixes that have been implemented in this version that you should know about. Here are a couple of noteworthy improvements:

• Additional address fields on company codes; some payers have begun requiring both the service’s physical address and billing address information to be provide in electronic claims files. These additional fields, along with changes that have been incorporated into the electronic claims modules, will meet this requirement.
• Call and Run Types have been expanded to allow defaults to be set on many more fields. This will be especially helpful for customers utilizing run sheet modules in many states.
• The NEMSIS PCR number is now available in the call search. Once call information has been submitted via a run sheet module to a state that has a NEMSIS compatible data system, any questions from the state about a call will reference the NEMSIS PCR number. This search simplifies the lookup of that information.
• The limit on the number of codes that can be selected as a filter and saved in a report parameter set has been removed.