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Contact Your Members Of Congress on Temporary Medicare Ambulance Relief

Submit Your Ambulance Cost Survey Today


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Contact Your Members of Congress on Temporary Medicare Ambulance Relief

While Congress returned to our nation's capital last week, it was only to pass a continuing resolution through mid-December on federal funding as they continue to negotiate on the remaining appropriations bills. Congress will return again after the Thanksgiving Day holiday to address unfinished business including possibly a fix to the physician fee schedule and Medicare provider relief.

Please take advantage of this opportunity to meet or write, if you have not already done so, your Members of Congress on the temporary increase of 5% for 2007 and 2008. It is critical that Members of Congress hear from their ambulance service providers on the matter.

To write a letter using the AAA online letter writing tool, please go to: http://capwiz.com/the-aaa/home/ . You can also access the system through the AAA homepage at http://www.the-aaa.org/ and clicking on "Write Your Members of Congress". The system will fax the letters to your Members of Congress for you! It should only take a few minutes to complete.

Over 1,200 letters have been sent from ambulance service professionals to Members of Congress. However, if we are to raise the profile of this issue, we need every AAA member contact to send letters. Please also forward this e-mail your staff and ask that they also write letters. The more letters the better!

Submit Your Ambulance Cost Survey Today

On November 6, the AAA issued a Member Advisory announcing that it is expanding its ambulance cost study to now include all AAA members as part of its sample. This is a completely separate survey from the recent AAA member survey through Zoomerang. We therefore strongly encourage every AAA member to complete and submit a cost survey. The study is essential so that the Association will have data to compare to the results of the ambulance cost study being conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO is expected to release the results of their study early next year. Please submit your survey by December 5.

The AAA contracted with Quantria Strategies, LLC to conduct the survey and only their representatives, John O'Hare and Judy Xanthopoulos, and our data analyst, Chris Hogan, will see the individual data. Participation is voluntary, of course, but responses from operations such as yours are critical if the survey is to accurately reflect the experiences across the range and diversity of all providers. Please therefore take the time to complete and submit a survey.

Any and all responses you provide to assist in this effort will be CONFIDENTIAL and not shared with the AAA leadership or staff, any private organization or government entity. Our data analyst will only report information in the aggregate.

To complete this survey, please follow these instructions:

•  Access the Internet website for the survey at www.ambulancecoststudy.com and click on "Survey" on the left hand side of the homepage;

•  You will be directed to the survey log-in and asked to provide a username and password. The login information is provided below;

Username: AAAMEMBER

Password: 10001

•  Download the survey, which is an Excel spreadsheet, on to your computer;

•  Compete the survey to the best of your ability; and,

•  Once it is completed; e-mail the survey to info@ambulancecoststudy.com no later than November 17, 2006.

For those AAA members who received a letter, e-mail or phone notification about being part of the random sample and have yet to submit a survey, please use the username and password contained in the e-mail or letter to access the survey.

We hope you will take the time to participate in this important project. With your help, we will be able to provide the Congress with information necessary to ensure that your organization is fairly and adequately compensated for providing critical, life-saving ambulance services to Medicare patients. If you have any questions, please e-mail John O'Hare or Judy Xanthopoulos at: info@ambulancecoststudy.com .

Thank you in advance for your participation.

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