During the legislative hearing today for the Idaho House and Senate Health and Welfare committees, a number of individuals voiced concerns about the performance of Idaho Medicaid’s contracted non-emergency medical transportation broker, Veyo, and their contracted drivers.
Veyo ensures that transportation is provided for Medicaid participants to medical appointments and other Medicaid benefits. Veyo centrally coordinates requests for transportation from Medicaid participants and assigns them to a network of transportation providers. Veyo took over the brokerage contract from American Medical Response in July of 2016. Medicaid’s responsibility is to monitor this contract and ensure that it is working as intended and with a high level of responsible service.
A change this big is never easy. Veyo and their provider network initially struggled with the switch. Medicaid responded by working closely with Veyo, transportation providers and community advocates to identify, target, and address areas for performance improvement.
We asked Veyo to provide a formal plan to address the problems that were called to our attention. We have seen steady improvement since implementation, but there are still problems that need to be addressed. Our highest priority is making sure that people who need to get to their services have safe and reliable transportation, and we are sorry that some people have experienced poor service from transportation providers or Veyo.
We are continuing to work closely with Veyo to monitor their performance and the performance of their provider network. At our request, they are increasing training for their drivers who transport people with special health needs, and are doing more training with their call center staff.
Every complaint or concern that Medicaid or Veyo receives is addressed. We encourage providers and participants to contact Veyo directly at (877) 503-1261 with concerns for the quickest response. If you feel your concern has not been adequately addressed, or if you feel that it needs attention from Medicaid staff, please submit your concern here, email MedicaidTransport@dhw.idaho.gov, or call (800) 296-0509 to inform Medicaid contract monitors.
We are committed to continued improvement for this very important element of the Medicaid system of care.
And you say it’s a big deal to you but in reality my fiance Amy Harmon and I do not feel this way we have a 13 year old disabled daughter that is fully disabled she has autism and down syndrome and we’ve been having great difficulty with her rides being cancelled or being late on a repetitive basis these Transportation companies MTM Mega Tran are not holding themselves accountable for this inadequacies and their staff is also very unprofessional it is cost my fiance to jobs what is disrupting my life and the lives of other people we’ve had to take the time these people are not taking their jobs seriously at these transportation companies and doing their jobs as their paid to do something needs to be done about this obviously the monitoring system that is set in place is ineffective and not working
Thank you for contacting us with your concerns. We are interested in understanding your challenges and hope you will reach out to the non-emergency medical transportation team toll-free at 1-877-503-1261 or via email at MedicaidTransport@dhw.idaho.gov.