Please pay the bill you received immediately. Further settlement of the bill with the private insurance company must be carried out by the patients themselves. All further information on billing and claims should be provided by the insurance company directly. We cannot provide any further assistance on this issue.

§10 paragraph 1 of the Tyrolean Ambulance Service Law 2009 states that the patient as the beneficiary is always the payer of the costs incurred, regardless of who alerted the ambulance services. If you have a social insurance, then the statutory health insurance will cover the costs due to international health insurance agreements. If you are not covered by a health insurance, or your health insurance is not obliged to cover the services you have received, you as the recipient of ambulance emergency / transportation services also have to pay the costs incurred.

According to Austrian Law (esp. Tyrolean Ambulance Services Law) remuneration entitlement for the ambulance service provider commences as soon as the emergency vehicle exits the ambulance station due to an alert. It is inconsequential therefore if treatment was administered or the patient was transported off site or not. The expenses incurred for the ambulance services arise wholly through the provisioning of the vehicle, medical supplies and crew.

Rescue operations and qualified patient transportations are not subject to private law, and therefore do not need a civil-law agreement for charging for transportation. Rescue operations and qualified patient transportations are subject to public-law.  The legislature (regional Tyrolean Government) or parties commissioned by it, is obliged respond to the respective emergency situation. According to §10 TRG the person that benefited from said emergency response is to be charged for it.

• We have only incomplete or no insurance details on file for you.

• The doctor's orders for transportation for your “qualified patient transport” is missing.

• Your European Insurance Card is missing, illegible or out of date.

• The doctor's orders for transportation for your “qualified patient transport” is missing.

We need to receive the necessary information within 30 days, as this is the deadline for processing current insurance claims. Formal notice of this is given on the invoice for patients covered by an overseas insurance.  In this case, please send us a legible copy of your European Insurance Card via Mail. Your invoice will be cancelled upon receipt, and if applicable, we will only charge the patients contribution.

We are missing the doctor’s orders for your transportation on file. Could you please have your GP fill out the enclosed medical transportation order with the diagnosis, stamp and signature and return it within 14 days.

Yes. Please send us the doctor's orders for transportation as soon as possible. After receipt, your invoice will be cancelled and the bill sent to your insurance.

Please contact us via e-mail, fax or telephone, we will gladly send you a copy of the invoice.

• Please check if the payment was made out to the "Rotes Kreuz Tirol gemeinnützige Rettungsdienst GmbH". It is possible that your payment was made to another organisation that participated in the rescue operation, for example the doctor, the hospital or the ski patrol.

• If the payment was made out the "Rotes Kreuz Tirol gemeinnützige Rettungsdienst GmbH", it is possible that the details on the payment slip were not sufficient for correct referencing. If this is the case, please send us a copy of the payment slip and the invoice number so we can correct this.

• It is possible that you have received a number of invoices for different transportation efforts and the overdue invoice has not been paid yet.

Inherently the prerequisite for a payment claim is the service provided and not the invoice itself according to applicable law. If the service is not compensated for by the due date, then a right to collection charges and overdue fines within the legal extent comes into effect. The service provider must prove that an invoice was created, not that it was received by the addresse. We send out one invoice first and then an overdue notification 60 days later to the address provided to our rescue personnel.  It is the responsibility of the patient or the accompanying person to provide the correct address details, as it is not possible at that point for the emergency services to check that all details are correct. 

If there has been no reaction to the overdue notification during the stipulated time, the open invoice has to be passed on to the commissioned debt collection agency. From this point on the debt collection agency is solely responsible for further processing. To prevent further accumulation of costs, swift contact with the debt collection agency is necessary. If needed, the debt collection agency can provide you with copies of the invoices and other details of the rescue operation. Any possible rebate on the accumulated costs can only be arranged with the debt collection agency itself.

If the address that was used by the debt collection agency to reach you is grossly different to the address on file with the Tyrolean Ambulance Services, then upon request only the original invoice is due.

Click here to pay your invoice online if you are resident outside of the EU. This will save you the transaction fees in your country. We must receive payment within 30 days.

The health insurance only covers transportation to and from medical facilities. Residential Homes are not categorised as such. The Rettungsdienst Tirol GmbH is therefore obliged to charge the patient for the transportation costs. The tariffs are flat-rate tariffs set by the regional Tyrolean government, irrespective of the actual distance travelled. The Rettungsdienst Tirol GmbH does not have the capability to changes these tariffs.

Some Red Cross district headquarters can reimburse on an individual basis at least part of the costs for its Red Cross members. In this case, please contact your district headquarters, or the office of which you are an active or supportive member.

Medically necessary transportation will be paid for by the health insurance if a transportation order is available and the transportation is to the nearest medical facility.
Transportation across county borders and routine transportation has to be sanctioned by a chief physician BEFORE the start of the transportation.

The final decision to cover the costs lies always with your health insurance.

• If there is no valid health insurance at the time of transportation.

• If there is no doctor’s orders for it at the time of transportation.

• If the transportation takes place only on the patient’s wishes, or if the patient wants to be taken to a destination that is further away than the nearest medical centre (patients will be charged for the extra distance).

• If the destination of the transportation is not to a medical facility, or is not initiated by such a facility (e.g. transportation from patients home to a nursing home).

• If the transportation is from a vacation location back to the patient’s home country or the patient is transferred from the treating hospital to the home country. Private health insurance, if available, can cover these transportation costs.

• If the transportation crosses state lines, or it is a routine transportation without doctor’s orders.

ZAST must charge for the transport service if the patient was treated by a German ambulance service, even if this occurred in Tyrol. Normally the invoice will be sent directly to the health insurance. If the patient does receive an invoice, it does not need to be paid by the patient. They should contact their health insurance to find out how to proceed further. 

The emergency house call service covers only the installation of the equipment and the costs of the call centre of the Red Cross. In the case of an alert, the emergency services are called. This is a separate service undertaken by the emergency services under the Tyrolean Emergency Services Law 2009, and is not provisioned by the emergency house call system.

The health insurance cannot cover the invoice directly, nor does the inter-state health insurance agreement apply. As a patient treated in Germany covered by a German insurance the inter-state processing cannot be employed in this case. Please contact your health insurance directly on how to proceed further.

Every year the regional Tyrolean Government sets out a flat rate to be charged for ambulance and emergency service transportation. This rate is charged irrespective of the distance travelled during transportation. This rate is adjusted yearly on the 1^st. May and cannot be changed by the Rettungsdienst Tirol.

Concerning the ambulance transportation, the following tariff zones apply for the distances driven for the patient:

• Zone 1: 1-15km

•  Zone 2: 16-20km

• Zone 3: 51-100km

• Zone 4: 101-150km

Every further kilometre driven is charged for separately. Every individual zone is charge according to a flat rate approved and fixed by the regional Tyrolean Government and cannot be changed by the Rettungsdienst Tirol.