Every year, millions of dollars in Horry County E.M.S. charges go uncollected because people refuse to pay their bills.
First responders will be at your door in minutes to save your life, however this is not a free service.
Medical transportation comes with a cost, a cost that many who use the service do not pay.
This year, Horry County Council wrote off $5,121,379 of uncollected E.M.S. charges for the year of 2011.
In fact, from 2004 to 2011 $21.6 million dollars has been written off.
Ever week, the county invests around a thousand dollars in paper, ink, and shipping costs to send billing notifications to E.M.S. customers.
The return from these bills would be worth the investment.
“The bill which could be $300 to $3, 000,” said Deputy Chief Scott Thompson with Horry County Fire Rescue.
Unfortunately, a lot of those bills will come right back to the county.
Thompson says in total about 10 percent of the bills come back.
He says sometimes the reasons the bills come back are hard to believe.
For instance, he says sometimes people claim to be dead when they are not.
In total five attempts will be made to bill E.M.S. patients over a 140 day period.
After that, if you live in the state, the money could be withheld from your tax return.
However, in Myrtle Beach there are a lot of out of state visitors who use the county’s services.
When that is the case, the county is out of luck.
“We don’t have the resources to go outside South Carolina’s borders,” said Thompson.
That means if you live outside of South Carolina, there is absolutely no repercussion not paying your E.M.S. bill.
While the county continues to provide a service saving lives, millions of dollars sit uncollected because they do not have the resources.
But the county is looking to change that.
“We’re looking at a third party vendor to actually do the collection,” said Horry County Spokesperson Lisa Bourcier. “Their resources are so much larger than what we have with five individuals doing that exact same process,” she added.
Requests have gone out to bring in a company that would be able to pick up the slack.
It would cost no extra money to tax payers and instead the third party company would make their profits off of money they are able to collect.
Right now it is still up for debate and dollars are still going uncollected.
Soon that may change and help millions of dollars come back into the county’s pocket and inevitably save you.
Bourcier says the county is still reviewing proposals from third party billing companies.
If they do decide to hire a third party company, she says no current staff will be fired.
