Wittman Enterprises

We are the billing company for many ambulance providersHardship consideration and/or minimum payment amount acceptance, is at the direction of the ambulance provider, not set by Wittman EnterprisesIn this particular case, a complete financial hardship packet has not been received in our office, to dateWe are working directly with Ms***

Revdex.com: I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to my concern, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me at this time unless something changes

Clarifications: • Wittman Enterprises, LLC bills for ambulance transports on behalf of the City of Grand Junction, a transporting ambulance service provider. • Wittman Enterprises, LLC is not a collection agency and does not (and is not allowed to) report accounts to [redacted] .... Summary of process: Medicare is billed separately from the hospital for ambulance transportation. Medicare pays 80% of the Medicare fee schedule allowance, which transfers the responsibility for paying the remaining 20% (patient copay) of the Medicare allowed balance back to the Medicare patient or a secondary insurance. If a patient does not respond to our billing, the balance of the account, per City policy, is sent to the City’s contracted collection agency. Wittman Enterprises, LLC, is not the creditor for the outstanding balance.

Response to Customer’s Statement:Wittman Enterprises, LLC has been working with *** billingclients since 1991: balancing their financial accountability needs withconsistent and proper billing and reimbursement protocols, while neverforgetting that patients deserve respect and compassion throughout
theprocess. We are not a collection agency and therefore do not (nor are welegally allowed to) employ harassing or aggressive collection practices, nor dowe have anything to do with a patient’s credit report. We are contractedby the City of Orange to receive their patient care records electronically(ePCR) and, working from the information on the form, bill for the servicesprovided as allowed by city statutes and charters.In this particular case we followed our billingprotocols, beginning with the ePCR received from the City of Orange thatprovided whatever information responding paramedics were able to documentduring the course of their emergency response We received a PCR with thename *** ***, an address, and a date of birth. However, when we areunable to reach patients and are unable to find an active phone number, we useindustry-specific billing tools to help provide missing demographicinformation. Such was the case here where the service matches as manyidentifiers as possible (based on the information available at the time) toidentify a phone number and any other missing demographics. Unfortunately, there are rare occurrences where these services identifyincorrect information based on matching identifiers including the first andlast name on the PCR (*** ***) the day/month of birth. It is truly astatistical anomaly and not the result of phishing or any other nefariousactivity. We simply conduct our work for the client to do the best we canwith the information we have available when we receive it. We acknowledge that our search services identified Mr.*** incorrectly and that statistically this is extremely unusual. Weregret the inconvenience that this caused Mr*** and we followed all theappropriate steps to correct the errant information and update the patientrecords accordingly once the City of Orange brought it to our attention. However, we categorically deny that this translates to any sort of collectionpractices that are harassing or abusive in nature Nothing in thisincident supports the faulty labels “sketchy” or “sleezy (sic)”. We arenot a collection agency nor do we act like one. Any attempt to arrive atsuch a conclusion based on an anomalous event is frankly irresponsible,inaccurate, and potentially slanderous. Response to Desired Settlement:As a rule, we identify ourselves as the Ambulance Billingservice for [name of City]. Our clients provide the direction for us onhow they prefer us to address their patients; however, it is standard practicefor most companies to contract with outside billing services. We stronglyencourage all of our callers to verify with the City the validity of their billand their billing callers in case there is any question aboutauthenticity. Our client base is made up almost entirely of cities andmunicipalities who regularly audit our work and our methods

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to my concern, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me at this time unless something changes.

We are the billing company for many ambulance providers. Hardship consideration and/or minimum payment amount acceptance, is at the direction of the ambulance provider, not set by Wittman Enterprises. In this particular case, a complete financial hardship packet has not been received in our office,...

to date. We are working directly with Ms. [redacted].

BusinessResponse to Customer’s Statement: Wittman Enterprises, LLC bills for ambulance transports on behalf of the City of Downey, a transporting ambulance service provider.  When payment is received from either insurance or the patient directly, the monies are deposited directly into the...

City’s bank account.  The paperwork and processing for a refund check, that is mailed directly from the City, may take between 60-90 days.  The patient has received the refund.  While this 90-day timeframe was discussed with the patient on couple of occasions, our apologies for any confusion that still remained.

Clarifications: • Wittman Enterprises, LLC bills for ambulance transports on behalf of the City of Grand Junction, a transporting ambulance service provider. • Wittman Enterprises, LLC is not a collection agency and does not (and is not allowed to) report accounts to [redacted]....

Summary of process: Medicare is billed separately from the hospital for ambulance transportation. Medicare pays 80% of the Medicare fee schedule allowance, which transfers the responsibility for paying the remaining 20% (patient copay) of the Medicare allowed balance back to the Medicare patient or a secondary insurance. If a patient does not respond to our billing, the balance of the account, per City policy, is sent to the City’s contracted collection agency. Wittman Enterprises, LLC, is not the creditor for the outstanding balance.

Review: I received a call from an unnamed agency (incoming from [redacted]). The caller inquired if she was speaking with [redacted]. I replied that she was. She then stated that she is calling to collect an outstanding balance from [redacted] services rendered in the City of Orange back in January. I informed the young lady that I live in St. Louis, and have not been anywhere in the vicinity of the City of Orange since being stationed at Vandenberg AFB back in 2004-2005 timeframe. Furthermore, I have never in my life received [redacted] services or been transported in an ambulance. She then asked to verify my date of birth and current address, after which she stated that my name and date of birth matched what they have in their records. I maintained that they have the wrong person. She then snidely remarked that, since the name and address matched their records, they were going to send the balance to collections and my credit will be adversely affected.After I hung up the telephone, I immediately searched [redacted] for the number. It seems as though it is a billing/collections agency for a number of different city departments. I realized after the fact that I should not have provided my date of birth, as she was likely phishing for said information. The bottom line is I dont know whether someone maliciously provided my information when utilizing [redacted] services back in January, or if the agency merely did some cursory search for someone with my name and tracked down my phone number, looking for the easiest target to pin the balance on. Either way, the agency should be reported for its unethical practices.I then contacted the City Attorney of the City of Orange. After explaining the situation, he intestigated and later confirmed that it was not me. The real individual shared my first name and was born on the same day, though of a different month and a different year. Suffice it to say, they were phishing for information. Wittman Enterprises is a sketchy and sleezy company.Desired Settlement: I would like for the company to be required to me transparent when they call. Instead of using the generic name of "EMS Billing", they should be required to use their legal name of "Wittman Enterprises, LLC". They do not want to do this because they know that they are employing unethical business practices and really don't want people to know who they are.Moreover, an audit should be done and a tally assessed of how many others are similarly situated to me, then sanctions imposed.

Business

Response:

Response to Customer’s Statement:Wittman Enterprises, LLC has been working with [redacted] billingclients since 1991: balancing their financial accountability needs withconsistent and proper billing and reimbursement protocols, while neverforgetting that patients deserve respect and compassion throughout theprocess. We are not a collection agency and therefore do not (nor are welegally allowed to) employ harassing or aggressive collection practices, nor dowe have anything to do with a patient’s credit report. We are contractedby the City of Orange to receive their patient care records electronically(ePCR) and, working from the information on the form, bill for the servicesprovided as allowed by city statutes and charters.In this particular case we followed our normal billingprotocols, beginning with the ePCR received from the City of Orange thatprovided whatever information responding paramedics were able to documentduring the course of their emergency response. We received a PCR with thename [redacted], an address, and a date of birth. However, when we areunable to reach patients and are unable to find an active phone number, we useindustry-specific billing tools to help provide missing demographicinformation. Such was the case here where the service matches as manyidentifiers as possible (based on the information available at the time) toidentify a phone number and any other missing demographics. Unfortunately, there are rare occurrences where these services identifyincorrect information based on matching identifiers including the first andlast name on the PCR ([redacted]) the day/month of birth. It is truly astatistical anomaly and not the result of phishing or any other nefariousactivity. We simply conduct our work for the client to do the best we canwith the information we have available when we receive it. We acknowledge that our search services identified Mr.[redacted] incorrectly and that statistically this is extremely unusual. Weregret the inconvenience that this caused Mr. [redacted] and we followed all theappropriate steps to correct the errant information and update the patientrecords accordingly once the City of Orange brought it to our attention. However, we categorically deny that this translates to any sort of collectionpractices that are harassing or abusive in nature. Nothing in thisincident supports the faulty labels “sketchy” or “sleezy (sic)”. We arenot a collection agency nor do we act like one. Any attempt to arrive atsuch a conclusion based on an anomalous event is frankly irresponsible,inaccurate, and potentially slanderous. Response to Desired Settlement:As a rule, we identify ourselves as the Ambulance Billingservice for [name of City]. Our clients provide the direction for us onhow they prefer us to address their patients; however, it is standard practicefor most companies to contract with outside billing services. We stronglyencourage all of our callers to verify with the City the validity of their billand their billing callers in case there is any question aboutauthenticity. Our client base is made up almost entirely of cities andmunicipalities who regularly audit our work and our methods.