Health Share of Oregon’s non-emergency transportation vendor is in danger of losing money if it doesn’t meet its performance targets by the end of June, the coordinated care organization recently stated.
According to a report in the Portland Business Journal, there have been problems with the Ride to Care service ever since GridWorks took over from an out-of-state vendor on June 1. Specifically, the company has apparently had difficulty in keeping up with a high call volume, leaving patients on hold for long periods, the report noted.
Health Share, which serves more than 300,000 people on Medicaid in the Portland area, provides non-emergency transportation for members with disabilities and cannot drive or without the means to get to their medical appointments. Ride to Care provides 150,000 one-way trips to doctor’s appointments and back home, per the report.
But recently, issues have been so bad that Health Share had to place a senior executive with experience in crisis response and large-scale call center management onsite at GridWorks. As of June 12, the average hold time was 7 minutes, 7 seconds; on June 13, the average hold time was 4 minutes 30 seconds, according to the report.
“We remain confident that this will be the right solution for the community in the long run; however, the continued issues with the transition are unacceptable,” Health Share spokeswoman Stephanie Vandehey said in a statement, as provided to the Portland Business Journal. “GridWorks’ contract states that they must meet certain performance targets in order to receive full payment. This includes answering 80 percent of calls within 20 seconds or less. If they don’t meet this target by the end of June, GridWorks will not receive full payment.”
Read the report in full here.
