County to write off $5M in unpaid emergency services

Medical bills — one dating from 1949 — are uncollected, most from 2001-13

Santa Fe County commissioners on Tuesday agreed to write off more than $5.1 million owed by residents for emergency medical services and ambulance bills, approving 5-0 a resolution brought by the county finance director, who deemed the 2,340 delinquent accounts uncollectable.

Finance chief Don Moya told commissioners the move would not forgive the debts but rather reclassify them to present a more accurate picture of the county’s books as permitted under a 2014 county policy.

The list of individual delinquencies dates back to January 1949 — a few hundred bucks owed from an incident then. Another is listed from 1973. The rest come from this century, a period from 2001-13, according to the resolution text. They range from a few dollars to several hundred; the total is $5,126,119.58.

“It does not mean we will never try to collect,” Moya said of the resolution. “It just moves them from a balance sheet on accounts receivable to uncollectable.”

The county collects on roughly 55 percent of its ambulance bills, Moya said, who noted that rate is in line with the national average. He told commissioners he would begin working on a mechanism to collect the outstanding debts and others owed for services provided by the county fire department.

An ambulance bill is issued to a county customer monthly up to four months, at which point a final bill is generated. Once past-due bills have been uncollectable for four years, county commissioners can decide to write them off, per state statute.

Since the county adopted its resolution in 2014 to address uncollectable accounts, Moya said the ambulance-service debt total represented “the largest one we’ve been carrying in our financial statements.”

Uncollectable ambulance and emergency

bills affect local governments small and large.

Last fall, North Lauderdale, Fla., with a population of roughly 44,000, wrote off $4 million in unpaid ambulance bills covering 1998-2010.

And in October, the Los Angeles Fire Department chief asked the board of fire commissioners there to write off $23 million in unpaid emergency service charges from 2010-15.

Contact Tripp Stelnicki at 505-428-7626 or tstelnicki@sfnewmexican.com.