Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT)
The best healthcare services in the world can’t help you if you have no way to get there. Nearly four million Americans miss or delay medical care each year because they lack transportation. While non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) and non-emergency transportation (NET) services account for under 1% of healthcare spending, consistent transportation access to healthcare vastly enhances health outcomes and leads to dramatic cost savings. MTM-one of the nation’s largest and most experienced transportation brokers-thinks outside the box to provide customized solutions catered to our clients’ unique needs. With more than 25 years of experience in the NEMT industry, MTM can help you take on your biggest challenges. MTM manages every aspect of the medical transportation programs we operate, leaveraging technology and automation to better manage transportation benefits for Medicaid and Medicare programs, state and county governments, and Managed Care Organizations (MCOs).
The MTM Advantage
As an industry leader for more than two decades, MTM has an impressive track record of working with our clients to manage NEMT. Established in 1995 for the sole purpose of coordinating disparate NEMT services, we were a pioneer in the industry and serve as a true partner in quality transportation. With reduced funding and a rising demand for transportation, MTM helps clients do more with less, lowering NEMT costs by up to 25% for previously unmanaged programs.
Fueled by our 2022 acquisition of Veyo, MTM uses data and technology to cut NEMT program costs and improve health outcomes for your members. We’re more than just a NEMT broker. We’re part of the continuum of care, collecting meaningful data that will help you make the most out of your investment in NEMT. After all, reliable and punctual transportation leads to fewer missed appointments, better outcomes, healthier members, and ultimately improved HEDIS, STAR, and CAHPS ratings. That’s why we put real-time trip tracking and simple booking tools at members’ fingertips.
Flexible Fleets
Managing the complex and dynamic needs of a transportation network can be daunting. MTM has rural and urban networks in more than half of the United States and has the experience to quickly and efficiently build networks in new locations—including networks of Independent Driver Providers (IDPs), a Virtual Fleet model that augments traditional networks of commercial transportation providers with highly qualified and NEMT-specialized rideshare drivers. IDP fleets allow us to serve eligible members in all regions, with a focus on reliability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.
We hold transportation providers–including IDPs–to high standards for customer service and safety, allowing you to rest assured that your members are in good hands. IDPs meet strict healthcare standards and participate in ADA education; CPR certification; and HIPAA, Sensitivity, and Medical Needs training. They also undergo drug testing and multi-level background checks to ensure safety and the highest level of service quality.
Industry-Changing Technology
Technology is the heart of MTM’s operations, enabling automation, protocol adherence, error reduction, and instant access to data. From MTM Link–our proprietary scheduling platform–to our call mining platform, to stakeholder apps, portals, and IVA systems, we support our vision of zero missed trips.Through MTM Link, we give our stakeholders real-time visibility and transparency into NEMT performance, as well as access to trip scheduling.
Cloud-based, peer-to-peer dispatching, combined with GPS tracking, enables us to dramatically improve on-time performance and service visibility. But what does all that really mean? Our system automatically detects and adjusts for issues like traffic or vehicle breakdowns without disrupting service. We also leverage a proprietary algorithm to predict what demand will look like throughout the day based on historical and future trip data, utilization patterns, and projected pick-up times and delays.
Real-Time Data and Insights
User-friendly, intuitive dashboards give total visibility into trip activity, including scheduling, routes, member communication, payment, and driver feedback. Plus, GPS tracking allows us to know exactly where each vehicle is and what route they’ve taken.
Whether you want to know exactly where a member was dropped off, or how effective pre-trip reminders are, we’ve got the data to do it. In addition to trip activity, we also offer insights into costs, service levels, driver documents and credentials, utilization rates, and member trends, offering unparalleled transparency into your transportation benefit.
#1 in Customer Service
While MTM may have evolved our NEMT approach to offer self-service functionality to members, our focus on traditional customer service is unwavering. With more than 600 trained customer service agents located across 21 states, MTM handles in excess of eight million calls annually while maintaining industry-leading customer satisfaction rates exceeding 95%.
Our customer service operations exceed National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) standards for speed to answer and abandonment rates, and provide multilingual services to ensure members reach a friendly, helpful representative 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
How Do We Compare?
| Consumer Rideshare Companies |  | Traditional NEMT Brokers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rideshare Technology / IDPs | X | X | |
| Stringent Credentialing Process | X | X | |
| Real-Time, GPS-Enabled App | X | X | |
| Member Management | X | X | |
| Support For All Ages, Modes, and Regions | X | X | |
| Door-to-Door Service | X | X | |
| Real-Time Coordination of Supply | X | X | |
| GPS-Enabled Trip Tracking | X | X | |
| Real-Time End-to-End Trip Management | X | ||
| Virtual Fleets | X | ||
| Predictive Analytics and Supply Matching | X | X | |
| A Single Platform to Manage Member, Trip, and Provider Data | X | ||
| End-to-End Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Monitoring | X | ||
| Full Transparency | X | ||
| Member App | X |
MTM manages transportation for:
- Medicare transportation and Medicaid transportation programs
- Managed Care Organizations (MCOs)
- State and county governments
- Departments of aging
- Hospitals and health systems
- County Health and Human Service Departments
Transportation: the Link Between SDOH
Where we live, learn, work, and play affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes. Using NEMT to ensure members get to their medical appointments is only half the battle in improving health outcomes and ensuring long-term social wellbeing. The same members who struggle to access healthcare often struggle with other Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) like economic stability, neighborhood and physical environment, food quality and stability, education, and social contact. We know there’s more health plans can do to provide community transportation for their members, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes, reducing healthcare expenses, and encouraging members to enhance their quality of life. That’s where MTM comes in.
What is NEMT?
Transportation is inexpensive compared to the high and rapidly growing cost of healthcare, making it more cost-effective to transport a member to preventative care rather than waiting for a serious health condition to arise. Studies prove that increasing transportation access to medical services results in such significant savings that it justifies increased non-emergency medical transportation spending. By offering the medical transportation service to the elderly, individuals with disabilities, and other transportation broker disadvantaged populations, health plans, and state agencies:
- Remove transportation barriers
- Prevent missed medical appointments
- Decrease the impact of chronic disease
- Reduce the costs of inpatient medical treatment to Medicaid recipients
- Save substantial healthcare funding for Medicaid beneficiaries
The Brokerage Approach
As budgets continue to tighten for Medicaid-funded programs like NEMT, states and health plans face increasing pressure to reduce costs and better manage spending. Over the past two decades, many have adopted the outsourced brokerage model as a means for controlling costs, improving service quality, and promoting uniform transportation delivery, based on recommendations by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
By contracting with a broker like MTM for transportation services, state Medicaid agencies and health plans receive a liaison between members and transportation service providers, as the broker facilitates trip scheduling, service oversight, and claims processing. Nationwide, MTM maintains a network of more than 1,250 transportation providers, in addition to our national virtual fleet of IDPs. Through this network, we schedule more than 25 million trips for in excess of 15 million members nationwide while handling eight million calls every year.
A strong case can be made that improved access to non-emergency medical transportation for transportation-disadvantaged persons is cost-effective in terms of better healthcare. In some cases, this cost-effectiveness translates directly into decreases in healthcare costs that exceed the added transportation costs. In other cases, longer life expectancy or improved quality of life for those suffering from the studied conditions justifies the added costs of improved access to NEMT cost-effectiveness.
Transportation Research Board Analysis
