CMS Pub. 100-02, ch. 10, § 10.3.6

A3-3114.C.6, HO-236.3.F

The term “appropriate facilities” means that the institution is generally equipped to

provide the needed hospital or skilled nursing care for the illness or injury involved. In

the case of a hospital, it also means that a physician or a physician specialist is available

to provide the necessary care required to treat the patient’s condition. However, the fact

that a particular physician does or does not have staff privileges in a hospital is not a

consideration in determining whether the hospital has appropriate facilities. Thus,

ambulance service to a more distant hospital solely to avail a patient of the service of a

specific physician or physician specialist does not make the hospital in which the

physician has staff privileges the nearest hospital with appropriate facilities.

The fact that a more distant institution is better equipped, either qualitatively or

quantitatively, to care for the patient does not warrant a finding that a closer institution

does not have “appropriate facilities.” Such a finding is warranted, however, if the

beneficiary’s condition requires a higher level of trauma care or other specialized service

available only at the more distant hospital. In addition, a legal impediment barring a

patient’s admission would permit a finding that the institution did not have “appropriate

facilities.” For example, the nearest tuberculosis hospital may be in another State and

that State’s law precludes admission of nonresidents.

An institution is also not considered an appropriate facility if there is no bed available.

The A/B MAC (A) or (B), however, will presume that there are beds available at the local

institutions unless the claimant furnished evidence that none of these institutions had a

bed available at the time the ambulance service was provided.

EXAMPLE: Mr. A becomes ill at home and requires ambulance service to the hospital.

The hospitals servicing the community in which he lives are capable of providing general

hospital care. However, Mr. A requires immediate kidney dialysis, and the needed

equipment is not available in any of these hospitals. The service area of the nearest

hospital having dialysis equipment does not encompass the patient’s home. Nevertheless,

in this case, ambulance service beyond the locality to the hospital with the equipment is

covered since it is the nearest one with appropriate facilities.