In February 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a new Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport (ET3) model that will allow participating ambulance suppliers and other health care providers to work together to deliver treatment in-place (either on-the-scene or through telehealth) and with alternative destination sites (such as primary care doctors’ offices or urgent-care clinics) to provide care for Medicare beneficiaries following a medical emergency for which they have accessed 911 services. Additionally, the model will encourage development of telephonic triage centers for low-acuity 911 calls in regions where participating ambulance suppliers and providers operate. The ET3 model will run for five years and start in 2020.

On February 27, 2020, CMS announced the next stage of EMS’s ET3 Model. CMS chose a variety of providers across the country to continue to participate in this EMS experiment. The providers include local fire departments, state agencies, and private EMS companies in both rural and urban areas. The local government grant recipients have not yet been named, but once those are named, the whole medical triage system via ET3 will be able to go live. A more detailed description of this phase of the project can be found at https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/et3/. Foley’s prior two postings on ET3 can be found here:

Ambulance Suppliers: CMS Launches ET3 – A New Triage Model for EMS

Ambulance Suppliers: CMS Is Not Planning to Issue Fraud Waivers for ET3

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