At the Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, the Washington County Ambulance Service asked for an amendment to the ambulance services fee schedule. After some discussion and calculations done by the interim Ambulance Director, Katrina Altenhofen, and the billing coders, they decided to make changes. Altenhofen had this to say,  “Since December, I have been looking into a variety of the different things within the ambulance service. When the billing office was able to get completely fully staffed, I asked both Jamie and Liz to be doing some investigation because it appeared that claim percentages or returns on claims were extremely low. I serve on the Southeast Iowa EMS Council, and speaking to some of those other service directors as to where their service fees are, I found that ours are extremely high in comparison to what they have in this regional area, as well as what our Medicare and Medicaid really allows. ” Many of the service prices have been reduced by half or more. The only point of discussion from the Board was for the life assistance fee. There was concern that at a rate of $0, it would end up increasing the call volume for the service and be misused. The lift assistance fee will be $250, with flexibility given to the ambulance service about when to charge that fee.