Make sure you are comparing the same service
Ask which incident types a provider supports and what work is included. Fire response cost recovery is different from patient transport and medical billing. A provider’s experience in one area does not, by itself, answer your questions about another.
- Which of our response types can you review?
- Who submits the incident records, prepares bills, and follows up with insurers?
- What local approval or policy work must our department complete?
- What happens when documentation or insurance information is missing?
Ask exactly who can receive a bill
Terms such as “insurance first” can leave an important question unanswered: what happens if insurance does not pay? Ask for the policy on uninsured incidents, denials, residents, nonresidents, and other individuals.
Onsite bills insurance companies only. We do not send the bill to an individual when a carrier denies it. This applies across all five incident types we support.
Follow a payment from the insurer to your department
Onsite has no contracts or subscriptions. Our fee is an agreed percentage of recovered funds: we receive the insurer’s payment, deduct the fee, and pay your department its share. We explain that arrangement before you start.
| Ask the provider | Why the answer matters |
|---|---|
| What triggers your fee? | Establish whether charges depend on actual recovery or another event, and identify any other costs in the agreement. |
| Who receives the insurer’s payment? | Your team needs to know where the money goes and how the department receives its share. |
| How are fees and department payments shown? | You should be able to distinguish gross receipts, fees, the department share, and payments issued. |
| Whose rate schedule do you use? | Ask who created it, how it is applied, and how changes are handled. A rate schedule is not proof of insurance coverage. |
| What happens to open claims if we stop? | Resolve responsibilities for follow-up, records, and outstanding payments before that situation arises. |
Look past the headline recovery number
Ask whether a reported result represents invoices, insurer collections, or money remitted to a department. Check the incident type, number of responses, timeframe when provided, and the circumstances of the department. One customer’s result does not establish what yours will recover.
Ask for a demonstration of how your team would review submissions, denials, open work, and payments. Confirm who gets access, which reports can be exported, and whether reports are delivered or retrieved by your staff.
Bring operations and finance into the same review
A useful evaluation includes the person preparing incident records, the person accountable for local approvals, and the person reconciling the money. Each sees a different part of the workload.
If you use a pilot, agree what you will evaluate and how unresolved claims will be handled. Do not assume a short trial gives every insurer enough time to reach a payment decision.
- Chief: Can our staff provide the records this requires?
- Administrator: Is the billing policy clear and consistent with our local requirements?
- Finance: Can we distinguish the amounts billed, recovered, deducted, and remitted?