City catches up on old billings

The city of Grand Coulee continues to make headway in its billings and collections in both its municipal court and ambulance programs, City Clerk Carol Boyce told the city council at its most recent meeting.

Court billings had fallen three-and-a-half years behind, from August 2009 to December 2012, Boyce told the council, but now they are caught up and the time allotted to make the billings is sharply curtailed.

The payment on the court billings totalled $78,125, of which just under half, $37,552, goes to the city and the remainder to the state and county under a fixed formula. Of the total, $40,018, went to the state and $554 to the county.

Boyce said the average amount the city receives on court billings comes to about $11,000 a year.

In ambulance billings Grand Coulee billed out $158,807 from April 2012 through March 2013. Of that amount, Boyce stated, $92,836 has been collected with $30,610 still pending.

Of the total amount billed for Medicare/Medicaid patients $32,474 has been disallowed,

The report was good news for the city. A couple of years ago ambulance billings were in the news because the city had failed to make them.

Fire Chief Rick Paris was appointed by then-mayor Tammara Byers to find a third party firm that could get the billings caught up.

Boyce’s report shows that the billings for both the court and ambulance billings are current.