Air Ambulance: 2.37× the Insurer's Own Benchmark
In the last quarter of 2025 the median prevailing offer in air ambulance disputes was 2.37× the qualifying payment amount — the figure the plan itself calculated. Across the second half of 2025, certified IDR entities decided 20,416 payment determinations in this category, covering 26,598 items or services.
What the Federal Data Says About Air Ambulance
How to read this. The qualifying payment amount is the plan's own calculated benchmark — generally the median contracted rate for the service in the geographic area. A median prevailing offer of 2.37× QPA means that in half of the decided disputes in this category, the offer the certified IDR entity selected was at least 2.37 times what the plan had calculated. It is a measure of the gap between the plan's benchmark and what an independent entity found defensible. It is not a prediction, a guarantee, or an average recovery for any particular practice, and it does not include disputes that were found ineligible or that closed before a determination. CPT range for this category: Air ambulance transport, reported separately by CMS from all other item and service categories.
Source: CMS, Federal Independent Dispute Resolution Process — Supplemental Tables, Q3 and Q4 2025, Table 14 (prevailing offers relative to QPA by specialty) and Table 12 (payment determination outcomes). Published by CMS here.
Why Air Ambulance Claims End Up Out of Network
Air ambulance is the one transport category Congress brought inside the No Surprises Act, and the Departments report it separately from every other service in every published dataset. The patient is protected from balance billing for out-of-network air ambulance transport, and the dispute moves to the plan and the operator.
Two features distinguish air ambulance disputes. First, ground ambulance was deliberately left out of the federal process — a distinction that catches operators running both. Second, air ambulance claims are individually large, and the federal data shows that the largest claims close the smallest multiple relative to the plan's benchmark. The absolute dollars are still substantial; the percentage gap is not.
Deciding Whether a Claim Is Worth Disputing
Three things determine whether a specific claim belongs in federal arbitration, and none of them is the specialty itself.
1. Is the claim eligible?
15.0% of disputes closed in January–September 2026 were found ineligible, down from 18.7% in the second half of 2025 but still about one in seven — the single largest source of wasted effort in this process. Eligibility turns on whether the item or service falls under the federal protections rather than a state process, whether open negotiation ran its full 30 business days, and whether the dispute was filed within the four-business-day window that follows. Getting this wrong costs the fee and the claim.
2. Does the arithmetic work?
Since June 11, 2026, the administrative fee is $15 per party per dispute, down from $115. The certified IDR entity fee is set within a range published annually by the Departments and is paid by the non-prevailing party. Against those costs, the relevant question is the gap between the plan's payment and a defensible value for the service — and the federal data shows that gap by claim size is largest on smaller claims, not larger ones.
3. Can the claims be batched?
Qualifying claims may be submitted together in a single dispute. For a air ambulance practice generating similar claims against the same plan, batching is usually what turns a marginal economic case into a clear one.
We review claims against these three tests before anything is filed, and we are paid only out of what is actually recovered. If the claims do not clear the tests, we say so.
Common Questions About Air Ambulance Claims
What did federal arbitration award for air ambulance claims?
Across 20,416 payment determinations in the second half of 2025, the median prevailing offer in this CPT category was 2.37× the plan's qualifying payment amount, per CMS Table 14. That is a median across every determination in the category, not a prediction for an individual claim, and the multiple falls as the claim gets larger — from 5.22× below $100 to 1.69× above $10,000.
Which CPT codes does this cover?
CMS groups these determinations under Air ambulance transport, reported separately by CMS from all other item and service categories. The category accounted for 1.6% of all 1,297,738 payment determinations the Departments reported for the second half of 2025.
Why do these claims end up out of network in the first place?
That is the part the numbers do not answer, and it is set out above for this specialty specifically. What the published data does show is that the process is used almost entirely by the provider side: of 1,372,563 disputes initiated nationally in the second half of 2025, health plans and issuers initiated 177.
What stops a claim in this category from reaching a decision?
Eligibility, not the merits. 15.0% of disputes closed nationally in January–September 2026 — about one in seven — were found ineligible and never reached a determination (18.7% in the second half of 2025), most often the wrong forum, a missed window, or a service the No Surprises Act protections do not cover. The window to initiate is four business days, beginning on the 31st business day after the open negotiation period started.