User Guide for the Cost Data Collection Instrument

Labor Costs  CMS has provided the following ground rules, which you’ll need to know so you can track accordingly.  

 For shared services such as fire‐department, police/public safety, or hospital/other Medicare provider‐ based departments, labor costs are often split between EMS and other duties.  When this happens, an  agency will need to track those costs in a way that permits them to be allocated for reporting.   If your agency fits a shared services model, only include individuals whose responsibilities were either  partly or entirely related to your ground ambulance operation.     You will need to know the classification of each staff member at the beginning of the collection period.   This is the classification in which CMS requires each person be reported, regardless if the person  changes positions later in the year.    o Example: A person begins the year as an EMT‐B and six months later becomes a Paramedic.  For  program reporting purposes, CMS requires that person to be reported as an EMT‐B.   Regardless if an individual in the EMT/response category has other duties that would fall under  administration/facilities, these individuals must be tracked and reported in the EMT/response category  and not  in any other category.   For administration/facilities not involved in EMT/response, but who nonetheless retained multiple roles,  you will need to assign each individual to the category that best represents their primary activity.   You will need to track staff that have some ground ambulance responsibilities but do not have  responsibilities in any of the other listed categories.  When it comes time to report, you would report  these as “other.”   Note: Outside contract services that include multiple services, in which labor is involved, will be  reported in a separate section. 

Labor Categories 

CMS has established the following labor categories, in which each have paid (full and part‐time) and volunteer  designations.  These categories guide the rest of this section.   

 EMT/Response   Administration/Facilities   Medical Director 

Obviously, not all will apply to your agency and if so, disregard.  For example, if your agency is a not affiliated  with a fire department, then questions pertaining to allocating hours would not apply. 

Let’s visualize this as a table:

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