Escambia County, FL (Newsradio 92.3) -- Escambia's Board of Commissioners will be meeting this evening, they've got a huge agenda with many items to cover. One of those items is writing off bad debt for Escambia County's EMS service.... That debt comes in the form of unpaid bills for ambulance services.
Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore says they try to collect money due for 12 months -- then the debt isn't written off, but rather it gets sent to a debt collection service. Once the debt is sent to the collection service the county only receives a fraction of the amount due. The total debt to be written off is about 10 million dollars. Gilmore says that's about the same as last year, and close to the national average.
Gilmore says due to the nature of EMS they cannot deny services to people who won't pay their bill. He says the problem is made worse by people who abuse the EMS system and call for an ambulance when they don't really need it.
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