Pennsylvania’s Medicaid transportation program will soon be undergoing major change.

By law, states must provide free non-emergency medical transportation for their Medicaid recipients.  The Pennsylvania Medical Assistance Transportation Program has fulfilled that mandate for the past 35 years, with county governments shouldering primary responsibility for providing or arranging for the transportation for their Medicaid-covered residents.

Under a plan adopted by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which administers the state’s Medicaid program, that would change, with the state currently reviewing proposals from private vendors that would serve as brokers and assume this responsibility for large sections of the state:  the eastern, central, and western parts of Pennsylvania.

Changing the program in this manner would enable Pennsylvania to change the classification of medical transportation from an administrative cost to a service cost, which would drawn down more federal Medicaid matching funds and save the state about $10 million a year.

Learn more about what the state is doing, why it is doing it, and why some people believe the new approach may be more expensive and less effective in the Philadelphia Inquirer article “As changes come to Pa. Medicaid transportation program, counties fear bumps in road.”