CMS: Urgent Care Centers Are OK as Destinations for Ambulance Transport During Pandemic

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has broadened the array of acceptable destinations for ambulance transport—with urgent care centers prominent among those destinations. If transport to a hospital emergency room is not medically appropriate because of conditions at that hospital, for example, ambulances can bring patients to an urgent care center, community mental health center, federally qualified health center, physician’s office, ambulatory surgery center, or any location providing dialysis services if an end-stage renal disease facility is not available. CMS prepared a fact sheet with details of this and other changing regulations in light of the pandemic.