American Medical Response to cut about 200 Salida jobs

American Medical Response will close a regional billing operation in Salida and cut about 200 jobs.

According to employees, the company provided information to workers in a meeting Tuesday that did not jibe with the limited information released to The Modesto Bee this week. Workers identifying themselves as AMR employees said in posts on The Bee’s Facebook page that they were told some work would be moved to billing centers in India and the Philippines.

“There will be some work done overseas,” said an employee who asked not to be identified out of concern about being let go while searching the job market. “I heard him say the Philippines. … I don’t remember the other country. We are devastated.”

A spokesman said the nation’s largest ambulance company is decentralizing its billing operations and outsourcing the majority of those functions to Centrex Revenue Solutions, a U.S.-based company. Spokesman Jason Sorrick said some billing work will move to two regional centers in Colorado and Ohio that Centrex will manage. He added that supervisors will have an opportunity to work for Centrex.

Assistance will be offered to help those losing their jobs. “We let them know early in the process so they have a longer period of time to seek opportunities for employment,” Sorrick said.

The company said the higher cost of doing business in California was a factor in the decision to close the billing operation. Besides expensive real estate and regulatory costs, California has some of the lowest rates in the nation for Medi-Cal reimbursements, Sorrick said. In July, AMR served notice that it would eliminate 120 positions in Torrance in Southern California next month.

For a number of years, AMR has maintained a billing operation along with the Lifecom dispatch center on Stoddard Road. Sorrick said the Lifecom center will remain at that location. Layoffs in the billing operation are expected to occur from Dec. 31 through early March, employees said.

There was no information on how many of the affected billing jobs were full time or part time. Employees said the billing workers have been paid about $12 an hour and up.

The billing employees in Salida have processed patient care and insurance information sent in from the field, checked it for accuracy and then billed insurance providers and government health programs. AMR has a lease on the building for three more years.

According to a statement released by Sorrick, staffing has been increased at a dozen billing centers, including those in Orange County and Arizona that provide services for AMR operations in 40 states. The partnership with Centrex will allow for developing a billing system that’s integrated with a computer-assisted dispatch platform, the company said.

Jeff Rowe, director of Alliance Worknet, said Wednesday that AMR had yet to notify the agency about the job cuts as required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. If work is being outsourced to an overseas company, Rowe said, that would make affected workers eligible for more generous federal aid, such as up to $10,000 in cash assistance to help them relocate within the U.S.

AMR is owned by Envision Health, a publicly traded company that also owns EmCare Holdings Inc., a leader in providing outsourced physician services for hospitals. The ambulance company has more than 19,000 paramedics, emergency medical technicians and other staff providing service to 2,100 communities in the U.S.

This story was originally published October 15, 2014 at 8:36 PM with the headline "American Medical Response to cut about 200 Salida jobs."