Apparently, there is a fee for doctors for summoning an ambulance to their office in emergency situations

“When Dr. John Doherty received a bill last fall from the city of Torrance, related to a 911 ambulance ride one of his patients had taken to the hospital, he was shocked.

The internal medicine physician had summoned city fire paramedics to his Torrance office when a patient repeatedly fainted due to plummeting blood pressure. The elderly patient was taken via private ambulance with Fire Department paramedic supervision to a nearby emergency room.

The $267 bill Doherty received was not a bill for the actual transport of the patient — that’s generally paid by the patient’s insurance. It was a bill for summoning paramedics to a doctor’s office. And it came with a warning that the fee could not be passed on to the patient or an insurer, that it was the doctor’s office’s bill to pay.”