When Minutes Count for Emergency Medical Patients Act

This bill creates a new Medicare payment model to help ambulance services keep and use key life‑saving medicines and blood products during emergencies. It adds extra payments to ground and air ambulance services to cover the real costs of having these supplies ready, safely storing and transporting them, and meeting data reporting needs. The model must run for at least five years, include agencies across all HHS regions and in rural, frontier, suburban, and urban areas, and pay in monthly or quarterly lump sums. Covered drugs include items like epinephrine, saline, dextrose, and fentanyl. After the model ends, Medicare must report to Congress on whether these payments improved care and patient outcomes, including in underserved and rural communities.

It also directs the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) to study and report on how Medicare pays for emergency medical services. The report must look at EMS medical director pay, the EMS workforce shortage since 2020, “treat in place” and non‑hospital transports, quality measures, and whether Medicare should add a clear definition of “emergency medical services” and treat EMS agencies as Medicare “providers.”

Hospitals with emergency departments must also receive guidance within one year to reduce “wall time,” which this bill defines as patient handoff delays beyond 30 minutes. One year after the guidance, HHS must report to Congress on whether wall time went down and suggest any needed legislation.

• Who is affected: Medicare patients; EMS agencies and professionals; hospitals with emergency departments.
• What changes: Extra Medicare payments for on‑scene life‑saving drugs and blood; broad participation across regions; stronger data reporting; a MedPAC study on pay, staffing, and quality; federal guidance to cut ER handoff delays.
• When: Payment model runs at least five years; MedPAC report due within two years; hospital guidance due within one year, with a follow‑up report a year later.