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As the nation’s largest manager of non-emergency medical transportation programs for state governments and managed care organizations, Modivcare improves care coordination for more than 24 million eligible members and their corresponding providers and hospital networks.

TP Grows 9x With the Help of Digital Software

Posted by Modivcare
on Nov 4, 2021 3:37:57 PM
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When K&P Medical Transport launched in April 2013, the company had a single contract with a county in northwest Ohio. Over the next five years, the transportation provider (TP) added three more counties. Then, the company received an extraordinary opportunity that would more than double their service area. But to provide excellent service to all their members, K&P couldn’t continue with business as usual. Instead, the company went digital, enabling them to grow revenues 900 percent in just three years.

003ea-MDC_LP-BlogPost-Nov_BlogHeadshot_v2Starting slowly
K&P Medical Transport began as a small business in Defiance, Ohio, with just one job and family services contract. By 2018, the company covered four counties and used a software program that the IT department had developed in-house. But staff manually managed functions like scheduling, ride tracking, and most of the billing, according to Adam Wagner, Vice President. Wagner oversees day-to-day operations and business development for K&P.

“For scheduling alone, I spent about four hours a day just for four counties,” he says. “Billing took a full eight hours every Monday.” But he could keep up until the multi-county opportunity came up.

Managing growth
The contract to provide NEMT services for seven counties would let K&P grow exponentially—but the business had reached a breaking point. “There was no way to take this opportunity without me spending 12 hours a day scheduling,” says Wagner. Company managers realized they needed to go digital if they wanted to get any bigger.

Today, K&P serves 13 counties with 52 vehicles and also owns an ambulance division with five squads. But the time Wagner spends scheduling has been cut in half. “Thirteen counties take two hours to schedule,” he says, “But our trip volume increased threefold.” The accounting department runs billing straight from the TripMaster NEMT software, cutting Wagner’s time from eight hours to just two, 75% less than he needed previously.

The digital transformation also adds flexibility. Transportation is unpredictable and drivers’ schedules continually change. Now, it’s much easier for K&P to reroute drivers while ensuring members’ trips are always covered and they get to appointments on time.

The result—a 9X increase in revenues. “Going digital opened the door to make this happen,” Wagner says. “There’s no other way we could possibly have done this (without my wife killing me).” That doesn’t mean it was always easy, of course.

Grappling with change
“People in general hate change,” Wagner says. TPs are often mom-and-pop shops, with owners handling trips, then coming home to do billing, scheduling, and dispatching. As long as a TP stays small enough, that can work—and investing in NEMT software seems unnecessary.

“You have to keep in mind the time software saves and the resources it frees up for other things,” Wagner says. “It’s a cost of doing business.” Now he has time for hiring and sales calls, activities he couldn’t adequately pursue before.

The job is still tough, however. “I’m not saying the job’s not stressful or the days aren’t long now, because they are,” But he’s been able to shift to value-added work by having software that can handle tasks that used to be done manually.

In addition to cost, Wagner had another concern that stems from his close relationships with drivers: Most K&P drivers are retired or semi-retired and Wagner was concerned about their reaction if he replaced pen and paper with a tablet computer.

“I wanted something that’s going to be simple for the drivers and save them work,” he says. “Once they saw that they could press three buttons instead of writing 10 lines of information, they realized how much easier the new-fangled technology is.”

Paying off
The software also helps drivers with navigation. Drivers who don’t know an area well or own a GPS can ask the software to navigate and get turn-by-turn directions for their entire trip.

Wagner was worried drivers might feel like Big Brother was watching, given that the system tracks their whereabouts, but no one has complained. “If you’re going to be driving a company-owned vehicle, we need to know where you are at all times.” Then, a dispatcher can easily handle on-demand requests or sudden rescheduling when weather, traffic, construction, or vehicle issues change the plan.

In the end, Wagner feels going digital was well worth it. “Not only from a financial standpoint, freeing up the company to grow the business, but also from the standpoint of work-life balance and sanity,” he says. “Looking back on it now, it’s a no-brainer.”

For more information on the GO Digital program, call 1-800-597-2049.

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