LOWER ALSACE TOWNSHIP, Pa. – We\u2019re learning new details about how the federal government shutdown is impacting local emergency services.<\/p>\n
For days, ambulance crews say Medicare reimbursements were on hold, leaving them uncertain about when they\u2019d see payments for calls made after October 1. But that changed as we were reporting the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provided us notification that they were going to be holding all claims payments starting October 1,\u201d said Philip Salamone, Director of Operations for Lower Alsace Ambulance.<\/p>\n
In the middle of our interview with Salamone, he received word that the federal government had just lifted the hold. Ambulance companies can now reapply for funding, though payments could still be delayed by up to two weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitics aside, I don\u2019t care whether you\u2019re a Democrat or a Republican,\u201d Salamone said. \u201cThe issue is emergency medical services has been in dire crisis for the better part of the last decade. And playing a gamble with our reimbursement on a budget that is already stretched thin isn\u2019t going to help anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local leaders believe the reversal came after pushback from EMS providers nationwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, they\u2019re not in a position where this is going to threaten that in the short term,\u201d said Hunter Ahrens, Mt. Penn Borough manager. \u201cBut these types of unexpected events just complicate the business of keeping people safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials plan to discuss how to prevent similar disruptions at a borough meeting later tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER ALSACE TOWNSHIP, Pa. – We\u2019re learning new details about how the federal government shutdown is impacting local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8515,8521,5718,2027,744,1057,3831,8520,8517,2263,8516,8512,8518,918,8513,28,8514,50,8519,2876,128,130,129,8511,5651,66],"class_list":["post-10613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-director-of-operations-for-lower-alsace-ambulance","tag-economy-of-the-united-states","tag-federal-government","tag-federal-government-of-the-united-states","tag-government","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-economics","tag-hunter-ahrens","tag-insurance","tag-local-emergency-services","tag-lower-alsace-township","tag-medicaid-services","tag-medicare","tag-mt-penn-borough","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philip-salamone","tag-politics","tag-presidencies-of-the-united-states","tag-public-services","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reimbursement","tag-social-programs","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}