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Does someone in your household require ongoing medical care? Are you worried your electric, natural gas or telephone service might be discontinued? If you are, you should know Oregon’s regulated utilities offer a program to allow special payment arrangements to avoid having your telephone, electric and gas service from being shut off if you fall behind on paying your bills. It’s known as the Emergency Medical Certificate Program. The purpose of the program is to allow customers who are under a doctor’s care more lenient time payment arrangements. This allows the customer to get caught up and allows a utility to collect on the debt.
How do customers apply?
An Emergency Medical Certificate (EMC) is submitted to the utility by a qualified medical professional. These include a licensed physician, nurse-practitioner, or physician’s assistant authorized to diagnose and treat a medical condition without direct supervision by a physician. The physician can call in an oral certificate to the utility, however, it must be confirmed in writing within 14 days. The EMC does not need to be on a “company form” but must include specific information regarding how the loss of service will affect the customer. The customer or the medical personnel provides the EMC to his or her utility.
How do I qualify?
To qualify you must be the account holder or live with the customer of the account. You can be a relative (spouse, child, grandparent) or a roommate (friend, fiancé).
What must a certificate include?
- It must include the name of the person the certificate is for and relationship to customer
- Complete description of health conditions
- Explanation of how person’s health will be significantly endangered by terminating service
- How long condition is expected to last
- Type of service required
- Signature of the qualified medical professional
What does this entitle you to?
After securing a certificate you become eligible for a flexible time payment arrangement with your utility to begin paying off your past due amounts, and, more importantly avoid having your service discontinued. It’s important to understand that having an EMC does NOT excuse a customer from paying their bills.
EMC time payments may provide more lenient repayment terms than ordinary time-payment agreements.
For the energy customer, the Emergency Medical Certificate is good for 6 months unless your physician states the condition is chronic - then 12 months. The energy utility company will notify you at least 15 days prior to the medical certificate expiring so you can contact your doctor to have the form completed for renewal. For the telephone customer, the Emergency Medical Certificate is good for the duration of the Time Payment Arrangement (TPA). The telephone company will not notify you when the medical certificate is expiring.
If you have questions about this program, call the Oregon Public Utility Commission, Consumer Section at 1-800-522-2404, or your utility company.
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