Ambulance Billing

Payments for Artesia Ambulance bills may be made by mail, over the phone, or in person at 511 W. Texas Avenue. The city accepts credit cards (Mastercard and Visa) as well as cash and checks.

If you have questions about an ambulance bill, need to provide insurance information, or need a copy of an invoice, please request by calling Terri Woods at 748-0880 or by emailing Terri.

Detailed Notice of Privacy Practices

Purpose of This Notice

This Notice describes your legal rights, advises you of our privacy practices, and lets you know how Artesia Ambulance Service is permitted to use and disclose PHI about you.

Uses and Disclosures of Your Protected Health Information (PHI) We Can Make Without Your Authorization

Artesia Ambulance Service may use or disclose your PHI without your authorization, or without providing you with an opportunity to object, for the following purposes:

Treatment. This includes such things as verbal and written information that we obtain about you and use pertaining to your medical condition and treatment provided to you by us and other medical personnel (including doctors and nurses who give orders to allow us to provide treatment to you). It also includes information we give to other healthcare personnel to whom we transfer your care and treatment, and includes transfer of PHI via radio or telephone to the hospital or dispatch center as well as providing the hospital with a copy of the written record we create in the course of providing you with treatment and transport.

Payment. This includes any activities we must undertake in order to get reimbursed for the services that we provide to you, including such things as organizing your PHI, submitting bills to insurance companies (either directly or through a third party billing company), managing billed claims for services rendered, performing medical necessity determinations and reviews, performing utilization reviews, and collecting outstanding accounts.

Healthcare Operations. This includes quality assurance activities, licensing, and training programs to ensure that our personnel meet our standards of care and follow established policies and procedures, obtaining legal and financial services, conducting business planning, processing grievances and complaints, creating reports that do not individually identify you for data collection purposes, fundraising, and certain marketing activities.

Other Uses and Disclosure of Your PHI We Can Make Without Authorization

Artesia Ambulance Service is also permitted to use or disclose your PHI without your written authorization in situations including:

For the treatment activities of another healthcare provider;
To another healthcare provider or entity for the payment activities of the provider or entity that receives the information (such as your hospital or insurance company);
To another healthcare provider (such as the hospital to which you are transported) for the healthcare operations activities of the entity that receives the information as long as the entity receiving the information has or has had a relationship with you and the PHI pertains to that relationship;
For healthcare fraud and abuse detection or for activities related to compliance with the law;
To a family member, other relative, or close personal friend or other individual involved in your care if we obtain your verbal agreement to do so or if we give you an opportunity to object to such a disclosure and you do not raise an objection. We may also disclose health information to your family, relatives, or friends if we infer from the circumstances that you would not object. For example, we may assume that you agree to our disclosure of your personal health information to your spouse when your spouse has called the ambulance for you. In situations where you are incapable of objecting (because you are not present or due to your incapacity or medical emergency), we may, in our professional judgment, determine that a disclosure to your family member, relative, or friend is in your best interest. In that situation, we will disclose only health information relevant to that person's involvement in your care. For example, we may inform the person who accompanied you in the ambulance that you have certain symptoms and we may give that person an update on your vital signs and treatment that is being administered by our ambulance crew;
To a public health authority in certain situations (such as reporting a birth, death or disease, as required by law), as part of a public health investigation, to report child or adult abuse, neglect or domestic violence, to report adverse events such as product defects, or to notify a person about exposure to a possible communicable disease, as required by law;
For health oversight activities including audits or government investigations, inspections, disciplinary proceedings, and other administrative or judicial actions undertaken by the government (or their contractors) by law to oversee the healthcare system;
For judicial and administrative proceedings, as required by a court or administrative order, or in some cases in response to a subpoena or other legal process;
For law enforcement activities in limited situations, such as when there is a warrant for the request, or when the information is needed to locate a suspect or stop a crime;
For military, national defense and security and other special government functions;
To avert a serious threat to the health and safety of a person or the public at large;
For workers' compensation purposes, and in compliance with workers' compensation laws;
To coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors for identifying a deceased person, determining cause of death, or carrying on their duties as authorized by law;
If you are an organ donor, we may release health information to organizations that handle organ procurement or organ, eye or tissue transplantation, or to an organ donation bank, as necessary to facilitate organ donation and transplantation; and
For research projects, but this will be subject to strict oversight and approvals and health information will be released only when there is a minimal risk to your privacy and adequate safeguards are in place in accordance with the law.

Uses and Disclosures of Your PHI That Require Your Written Consent

Any other use or disclosure of PHI, other than those listed above, will only be made with your written authorization (the authorization must specifically identify the information we seek to use or disclose, as well as when and how we seek to use or disclose it). Specifically, we must obtain your written authorization before using or disclosing your: (a) psychotherapy notes, other than for the purpose of carrying out our own treatment, payment or health care operations purposes, (b) PHI for marketing when we receive payment to make a marketing communication; or (c) PHI when engaging in a sale of your PHI. You may revoke your authorization at any time, in writing, except to the extent that we have already used or disclosed medical information in reliance on that authorization.

Your Rights Regarding Your PHI

As a patient, you have a number of rights with respect to your PHI, including:

Right to access, copy or inspect your PHI.
Right to request an amendment of your PHI.
Right to request an accounting of uses and disclosures of your PHI.
Right to request restrictions on uses and disclosures of your PHI.
Right to notice of a breach of unsecured protected health information.
Right to request confidential communications.

Internet, Email and the Right to Obtain Copy of Paper Notice

If we maintain a web site, we will prominently post a copy of this Notice on our web site and make the Notice available electronically through the web site. If you allow us, we will forward you this Notice by electronic mail instead of on paper and you may always request a paper copy of the Notice.

Revisions to the Notice
Artesia Ambulance Service is required to abide by the terms of the version of this Notice currently in effect. However, Artesia Ambulance Service reserves the right to change the terms of this Notice at any time, and the changes will be effective immediately and will apply to all PHI that we maintain. Any material changes to the Notice will be promptly posted in our facilities and on our web site, if we maintain one. You can get a copy of the latest version of this Notice by contacting Kyla Gonzales, our HIPAA Compliance Officer.

Your Legal Rights and Complaints
You also have the right to complain to us, or to the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, if you believe that your privacy rights have been violated. You will not be retaliated against in any way for filing a complaint with us or to the government. If you have any questions or if you wish to file a complaint or exercise any rights listed in this Notice, please contact:

Terri Woods
Artesia Ambulance Service
511 W. Texas Avenue
PO Box 1310
Artesia, NM 88211-1310
Phone: 575-748-0880
Email Terri Woods