PROVIDENCE – A medical transport company with a questionable record has received a new three-year contract from the state.
The R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services on April 12 tentatively awarded the contract to Medical Transportation Management Inc. for three base years, beginning July 1, followed by four one-year option years. In order to complete the process, Medical Transportation Management must submit a purchase order, which can take up to three weeks, EOHHS told PBN in an email.
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In December, EOHHS released a request for qualifications for the state’s nonemergency medical transportation program contract. Medical Transportation Management was one of two companies to submit a bid, WPRI-TV CBS 12 reported on Monday.
However, the awarding of the contract to Medical Transportation Management drew the ire of some lawmakers due to the vendor’s troubled past working in Rhode Island.
“So I’m hearing that the RI Dept of Human Services renewed the contract with MTM, the nonemergency transportation provider with whom there were many, many issues. Can’t wait to hear the justification for this one,” Rep. Patricia Serpa, D-West Warwick, said in a tweet on April 21.
Medical Transportation Management was first contracted by the state in January 2019, according to WPRI-TV, and two months later it was fined $1 million and saw its contract amended after a hearing by the R.I. House Oversight Committee over numerous complaints that the vendor had stranded riders.
The amended contract eliminated a provision that capped the amount of money the state could seek for inadequate services at 4% of the company’s monthly intake, while also allowing the state to withhold 10% of the company’s monthly payment and only release it to the vendor should it achieve “measurable performance goals,” WPRI-TV previously reported.
In 2021, Medical Transportation Management was fined $600,000 after a 77-year-old Coventry woman it was transporting was killed in a crash involving an allegedly drunk driver working for a subcontractor of Medical Transportation Management.
Dauda Elegushi, 25, who worked for Assured Transportation LLC, a subcontractor of Medical Transportation Management at the time, was charged with driving under the influence, after police said he was on the job with an open bottle of Modelo beer in his cupholder as he crashed head-on into another vehicle while transporting Lina Russo home from her dialysis appointment, leading to her death days later from injuries caused by the collision.
“Maybe the company will deliver, maybe they won’t,” Serpa told WPRI-TV on Monday. “But it confounds logical reasoning, it confounds every level of logic as to why they were awarded this contract.”
EOHHS spokesperson Ashley O’Shea told WPRI-TV that complaints were filed on less than 0.2% of the more than 2.2 million rides provided by Medical Transportation Management since the start of the 2020 fiscal year as of February 2023.
“The new contract enhances quality and safety assurances, transparency of vendor performance, financial management and [improves] member satisfaction of transportation services,” O’Shea said in an email.
In a written statement, Medical Transportation Management Chief Marketing Officer Michele Lucas said the company was “very excited” to learn it was awarded the contract, WPRI-TV reported.
“We are currently meeting all contractual obligations and metrics for the existing contract and look forward to partnering with EOHHS to implement the new contract with a focus on quality, safety, transparency, and member satisfaction,” Lucas said.
