Travis County Commssioners Court
October 7, 2003
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Item 23
23. Consider and take appropriate action on recommendation to increase the lift-off fee charged to patients for star flight services.
>> judge, quickly to introduce this, we will debt casey go through it -- we will let casey go through it, this is a scaled down version of what we had on the agenda a couple of weeks ago. We got consensus in terms of Commissioner Daugherty and I met with everybody involved on star flight related to the liftoff fee. There is a part 2 that we have related to the landing fee at the hospitals and we are working through some cost of service information related to that. And we would be bringing that back to the court. But in terms of this piece we do have consensus in terms of all of the stakeholders within the auditor's office, et cetera, I will let casey walk through why this is justified at this point.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> casey payne with star flight and with me john raltston the manager for e.m.s. We have before you a review of the liftoff fees that are charged to the patients for star flight. The review -- in reviewing our charges with other air medical programs operating in central Texas, we found that there was a gap between what we have been charging and what the other services were charging. As we looked at the service we felt that changing that fee to -- to market would be in the best interests of the program. The last out of county fee change was brought to you in July of -- of '01, so there really hasn't been a fee change since '01. The in-county fee I'm unaware of the last time there was a change in that fee because it was done pryor to my -- to my tenure at the program, which was in '98. So our current recommendation is that we raise the in-county fee from 1600 to 2,000 and we raise the out of county fee from 3400 to 4,000.
>> according to your backup, that actually pegged us below what air flight and temple are doing who are two of the biggest competitors in the out of county stuff. The in county rate reflects that the Travis County taxpayers through their tax bills are still paying through a great deal of the expense of star flight and the expense for that is much less to reflect the investment that you are already making.
>> so the Travis County competitor, or competitors are what.
>> currently, the programs operate in the same service area of star flight, temple air life out of san antonio and critical air that has various bases around central Texas.
>> critical air zone I'm familiar with. I thought they were beyond. But what fees do they charge?
>> they are a private for profit company and they will not share their charges with us. So the only one that's we could bring to you would be those that stat in temple and air life charge. I'm unaware of what critical air is charging, my perception is that it's higher than both air life and stat.
>> critical air the answer is I don't know, I don't know what critical air charges.
>> correct. They didn't disclose, we tried.
>> I do think at some point we ought to be -- bring back our collection procedures take a look at this. See if we can beef up collection.
>> we are working with Commissioner Davis and Commissioner Daugherty on the collection task force. So we are working at all of those collections as part of that.
>> the other question that emerged in our discussions is to really pin down what is the cost of operating star flight and quite frankly there's a lot of information we really don't have categorized correctly in terms of what is the medical mission and how much of our costs are we recovering? And how much is the built-in, well, you have got to do the training stuff and then how much of it is the rescue and other missions that go with the -- with the rest of the star in star flight. We are trying to get all of that information together, working with the city of Austin, the auditor's office and all of the other stakeholders to bring back a more comprehensive look at are we recovering our costs, it starts with what are our costs.
>> second.
>> I move approval of the proposed changes.
>> any more discussion?
>> yes. I would just like to say one thing, are we going to continue to work as hard in the collection aspect of this, I'm hoping sometime in the next year when we have an opportunity to get everybody [indiscernible] to ensure that we do make a strong impact on money that's -- that's outstanding out there now. So we owe owe we are moving in that direction so thank you.
>> all in favor of the motion? That passes by unanimous vote, thank you all very much.
Last Modified: Tuesday, October 7, 2003 7:52 PM