Posted: 12:00 a.m.Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015

City to use AG office to collect delinquent EMS bills

ByVivienne Machi

Staff Writer

HAMILTON — 

Inan effort to retrieve as much new revenue as possible with a tough budget for2015 and beyond, the city of Hamiltonwill partner with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to collect 100 percent ofunpaid delinquent bills for emergency medical services.

HamiltonCity Council voted at Wednesday’s meeting on a resolution to create anagreement between the city and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for the AG officeto collect any delinquent EMS bills for the city, which would allow more of thebill to go straight into the city’s funds than their current arrangement withthird-party physician billing services MBI Solutions.

“Currently,the city writes off a significant amount of debt associated with billed butunpaid invoices associated with the cost of providing EMS service to citizens,”reads the report associated with the City Council agenda item.

Cityfinance director Tom Vanderhorst elaborated, saying that third-partycollections agencies can take their fees out of the delinquent bill, meaningthat the city would see less than 100 percent of the bill they’re owed. Butthrough the AG’s program, their 10 percent collection fee is an additionalcharge for the debtor, meaning the city can collect the full amount of thebill.

Vanderhorstcould not give a possible dollar amount of savings that the city could see fromthis program, but said that estimates could be “in the tens of thousands ofdollars.”

Vanderhorstadded that the city has been in discussions with the attorney general’s officeabout this program since September 2014, at the start of Hamilton’s 2015 finance talks.

AGcommunications spokesperson Dan Tierney said that the program, a localgovernment debt collection service, began in 2012 and originally collected forcourts. This year, the program has expanded to include things like unpaidemergency bills.

“Wecollect non-revolving debt, so not utilities, or anything like that,” he said.“These are final one-time debts like EMS billsor court fees.”

Thebenefit to the local government is that the attorney general’s office haslanguage that allows them to charge the debtor for their collections fees,unlike the third-party collectors, he said.

“Wehave the statutory allowance to do so, our operations are designed forgovernment collections, so we decided to offer the program,” he said.Currently, the local cities of Avon, BedfordHeights, Brooklyn, East Palestine, Lakewood, North Olmsted andOlmsted Twp. participate in the EMScollections program. Tierney said the full program services several dozenentities, including clerks of courts and some local technical schools.

Abenefit to the debtor: The attorney general’s office can tack the collectionsfee onto their local income taxes, or remove it from lottery winnings.

“Insteadof us paying you and then you paying us, the fee is just applied to your debt,”he said. “So instead of having to come up with that money, it will come out ofyour taxes, and it doesn’t come out of your checkbook.”

Takingthe fee off of lottery or casino and racino winnings is obviously based on luckif the debtor happened to win, Tierney said, but the attorney general’soffice’s authority to collect from those winnings provide another source tohelp offset the collection fee for the local government.

Cityofficials hope this could be a new source of revenue to offset possible structural deficits in the next couple of years.

Hamiltonexpects a $1.6 million general fund budget deficit in 2015, and while theannual ending fund balance is still projected to be at a safe level,diminishing revenue sources are concerning to city officials. Currently, thecity’s revenue sources include real estate taxes, where $2.26 million has beenbudgeted for 2015, fairly steady with previous yearly budgets; EMS life squadinsurance, budgeted at $1.57 million for 2015, down from $1.699 million in2012; and Hamilton’s largest revenue source remains income taxes, where 2015numbers project $17,655,000, up from $17.3 million in 2014. Hamilton receives small amounts of revenuefrom a variety of sources, including issuing birth certificates, collectingmotel taxes, and miscellaneous donations.

Hamilton firefighters responded to 9,822 EMS runs, 7,144 transports and 2,678 non-transports in2014, according to data provided by the fire department.

Sofar, the net revenue received for those runs is $1,584,029, said EMS CoordinatorMark Mignery.

“Ifyou divide that number by the total number of transports, you will get anaverage of $221.73 collected per call (as of today),” he wrote in an emailFriday to the Journal-News. “That number will rise as October, November andDecembers payment trickle in over the next 3-6 months.”

TheHamilton Fire Department has sent out delinquent bills adding up to $5,390,656,for which insurance companies have contractual adjustments in the amount of$2,709,967, Mignery said.