How Alterwood Advantage Uses Roundtrip to Optimize its Transportation Benefit for Medicare Advantage Members

Background  

Founded in 2020, Alterwood Advantage is a Licensed Medicare Advantage (MA) Organization that offers HMO and HMO-SNP plans. The organization operates in the state of Maryland and plans to expand into Virginia and Pennsylvania in 2025. Alterwood serves a diverse population, particularly underserved communities, providing essential coverage to individuals over the age of 65. The organization offers non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) as a supplemental benefit to about seventy-five percent of its member population.

“There’s a lot of data concerning the importance of people being able to get to their doctors, pharmacists, and clinicians – especially if they don’t have transportation. Offering this benefit can truly change and save lives.” – Aaron Burch, Co-Founder and Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Alterwood

Challenge

Before launching Alterwood, many of its team members had experienced issues with past NEMT vendors. These issues ranged from unreliable pick-up and drop-offs to an absence of real-time ride updates. As a result, employees were unable to track the status of members’ rides, and members were hesitant to utilize the ride services offered to them. After negative experiences with past NEMT vendors, Alterwood’s team made it a priority to find a vendor that met their desired criteria:

• Real-time Portal: A portal/dashboard providing real-time ride updates, enabling visibility into member’s ride status.
• On-Demand Transportation Access: Integration with on-demand transportation providers like Uber and Lyft, offering ambulatory members with convenient and flexible transportation options.
• Supplemental Ride Options: Availability of additional ride types, including wheelchair accessible vans, ensuring accessibility for members requiring specialized transportation accommodations.
• Dedicated Call Center: A call center staffed with agents available 24/7 to provide support with inquiries or concerns related to transportation.

Solution

Alterwood discovered Roundtrip in June of 2021, later going live with the software in January of 2022. Today, when a member wants to access their transportation benefit to book a ride to a medical appointment or pharmacy, they can call into Roundtrip’s 24/7 Navigation Center to share their desired destination, pick-up/drop-off times, and other relevant information. Once the ride is booked, Alterwood’s care coordinators can login to Roundtrip’s web-based portal to view the status of a member’s ride in real-time, providing greater visibility into pick-ups and drop-offs.

With Roundtrip, Alterwood’s team found a solution that satisfied their above criteria:

• Ability to offer rides from an assortment of transportation vendors including rideshare, medical sedan, taxi, wheelchair van, stretcher, and basic life support (BLS) ambulance.
• Secure transfer of member eligibility data and benefit information to allow for an up-to-date member database.
• Ability to set ride limits to ensure compliance with each member’s benefit design.
• Access Roundtrip’s 24/7 Navigation Center to book rides and receive support with technical issues or answer general inquiries.
• Reporting dashboards to assess benefit utilization, on time performance, grievances, and more.

Roundtrip’s upcoming launch of a new version of its member-facing mobile application will provide members with the autonomy to schedule their own rides. This application eliminates the need for members to call into the Navigation Center, increasing convenience and empowering members to manage their transportation benefit independently. Burch anticipates that this will further enhance member satisfaction, “…when you do roll out that software, which we’re really excited about, that will only skyrocket member satisfaction.”

Impact

Alterwood’s adoption of Roundtrip significantly impacted the organization and its transportation benefit. The organization experienced the following outcomes by utilizing Roundtrip:

1. Enhanced Transportation Reliability: Alterwood experienced a substantial improvement in transportation reliability compared to its previous vendors, achieving an impressive 93% ride fulfillment rate. Members can now rely on more dependable pick-ups and drop-offs, ensuring they reach their medical appointments and pharmacies with greater confidence.
2. Strong Benefit Utilization: Transportation benefit utilization is right on track with the organization’s goals. According to Alterwood leadership, approximately 15% of Alterwood’s eligible member population is taking advantage of the transportation benefit.
3. Minimal Grievances: By utilizing Roundtrip’s Navigation Center staff to help book rides and handle member inquiries, Alterwood’s employees are no longer burdened with the influx of transportation-related calls. Roundtrip resolves member grievances in real-time, allowing Alterwood’s staff to focus on more substantive issues such as medication delays or insurance complications. As a result, Alterwood has less than a 1% grievance rate!
4. Streamlined Operations and Reporting: Roundtrip offers Alterwood a range of reporting and operational insights that aid in optimizing the transportation benefit. Roundtrip’s software enables Alterwood to generate reports on ride consumption, vehicle types, ride reasons, grievances, and more. These reports also allow Alterwood to provide reports to its board and meet reporting obligations for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Conclusion

By ensuring more dependable transportation, access to a dedicated call center, and optimized operations and reporting, Roundtrip has helped Alterwood offer a transportation benefit that its members can depend on. This translates to better utilization and resulting medical appointment adherence, ultimately improving the well-being and satisfaction of its members. “The benefit of Roundtrip is foundationally the fact that our members are being seen by the clinicians that we need them to be seen by. By having access to transportation so that they can visit primary care physicians (PCPs) and specialists proactively, our members are more likely to avoid extreme health issues on the backend,” says Burch.