CAIRO — Grady County Emergency Medical Service is altering its bill collections method.

Grady County Board of Commissioners agreed, 4-1, at its Tuesday meeting to a six-month trial run with a billing service, National Reimbursement Group, to collect service fees. The group will receive seven percent of total fees collected.

Previously, Grady EMS Director Billy Rathel said, the department did its billing in-house using software but has not garnered the best results. Its collection rate in 2006 was 12.27 percent and 23.87 ($831,982) percent in 2007.

“We’re not garnering the funds we probably can in our billing procedures we are doing now,” he said Tuesday. “I used this company at the service I worked at before coming here. Our success in billing went way up. I’d like to try this for a year or so to see how billing can improve.”

Rathel said the group has the manpower to stay on top of regulations updates for Medicare/Medicaid, an area that needs attention in Grady County.

He said, by the time he left the other service, collections were about 70 percent, “which is about as good as you can do with Medicare/Medicaid.”

Commissioner Charles Norton said there would still be unpaid bills and collections written off from Medicare/Medicaid.

“We have to collect from the ones we can to offset the ones we can’t collect,” Rathel said.

Commissioners debated on which rate option to request from National Reimbursement Group. Its options were either seven percent of total collections or $16.60 per patient care report.

Commissioner Al Ball felt the percentage option might provide more incentive, but Vice-Chairman Bobby Burns, who voted against the item, believed per ticket was best.

“Using per ticket, at the end of the year, I think we might see what is better overall,” Burns said. “It appears percentage is going to cost us more.”

Commissioner Charles Renaud said the service’s current numbers are “abysmal” and supported trying out the billing group. He also suggested, in the future, the board look at hiring a qualified individual to solely handle the service’s billing.

Rathel said Thursday he is looking forward to the change.

“We’ll do the percentage option for six months, then decide if we want to continue with it or go to a charge per ticket,” he said. “I just want to get the best possible option for the county. Six months will give us time to see which is the better route.”