During the Coronavirus pandemic, non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers have continued to provide essential services and trips to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries can receive the care they need.
Like other industries and jobs currently deemed essential, we are seeing changes occur to emphasize safety, cleanliness, and social distancing both for the provider of those services and the recipients. Throughout all phases of the pandemic and eventual recovery, NEMT trips will need to continue requiring important adaptions to service delivery that match our new reality.
To provide additional resources to NEMT providers during this time, CTAA has collected, read, and analyzed guidance for NEMT providers provided by state Medicaid agencies. Through sharing the State by State COVID-19 NEMT Guidance Tool, CTAA hopes that NEMT providers, brokers, and even riders can get a sense of not only the available guidance in their state, but also look at trends across the country on topics such as PPE, Air ventilation, cleaning, payment and reimbursement, and transporting COVID+ riders.
The newly released online tool includes an overview spreadsheet offering the comparison of NEMT guidance across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to the high-level overview, there are also additional tabs that provide the specific language offered by state guidance on key topics.
It is important to note that all of the information referenced is based on publicly available guidance which means that at this time, many states may not have guidance available. Despite these gaps, CTAA hopes that the tool will allow for all providers to get a sense of trending guidance or best practices across the country.
The State by State – COVID-19 NEMT Guidance Tool will be updated as additional guidance becomes available from state Medicaid agencies. If you have information or guidance from your state that you would like added, please email king@ctaa.org.
The Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) and its members believe that mobility is a basic human right. From work and education to life-sustaining health care and human services programs to shopping and visiting with family and friends, mobility directly impacts quality of life.