LogistiCare scheduled roughly 40,000 rides to doctor’s offices, therapy and other MaineCare-related appointments around Maine in the last week of August. According to the state’s figures, it missed 40.

“We’d like to get it down to zero missed trips, (but) it’s a much healthier number than we were a year ago,” Stefanie Nadeau, director of MaineCare Services at the Department of Health and Human Services, said Tuesday.

LogistiCare took over the service Aug. 1 from Consolidated Transportation Solutions, which was plagued with issues and lost the nonemergency rides contract because of poor performance.

As ride-brokering — pairing a MaineCare recipient who needs a ride with an agency, volunteer or taxi able to take them — transitioned from CTS to LogistiCare, lawmakers learned last month that CTS employees received an extra two months of pay as incentive to not walk off the job before July 31. That cost DHHS an extra $100,000.

Headquartered in Connecticut, CTS had a 45-person call center in Lewiston. In its early weeks, CTS missed thousands of rides and as many as half of the callers hung up before reaching a live operator.

Nadeau said during the third week of August at LogistiCare, which covers five regions in Maine, including Lewiston-Auburn, “practically 99 percent of the calls were answered within 60 seconds (and it had) an average speed-to-answer rate of 10 seconds and an abandonment rate of less than 1 percent.”

LogistiCare, based in Atlanta, has call centers in South Portland and Kennebunk. The company’s report for the entire month isn’t due to the state until Sept. 15. 

MidCoast Connector/Waldo Community Action Program and Penquis Community Action Program broker similar calls in other parts of Maine.

“We are doing very well across all three brokers,” Nadeau said. “We have a lot of calls coming in and they’re being answered. All three are showing some missed trips, which is to be expected. We are focusing on trying to get that down to zero but do understand there are circumstances that may prevent that from happening.”

The figures so far are all self-reported from the brokers to MaineCare.

Nadeau said DHHS is not seeing “a significant number of calls (from missed clients calling directly); we may get a complaint here or there.”

State Rep. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, said judging by the agencies that have contacted her, she’s concerned that people have stopped calling DHHS, out of frustration.

Nadeau spoke last month in front of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, which Rotundo co-chairs.

“It was very disheartening for me to hear the representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services say that there are no problems, because clearly in this community there still are significant problems,” Rotundo said.

She said she’s heard from two local agencies with issues and a mother concerned about having her daughter with a developmental disability picked up by a taxi.

“If you have anxiety all day as to whether somebody is going to show up at the end of the day to pick you up, that’s significant,” Rotundo said. “If you are a parent putting a vulnerable child into a taxi all by herself wondering, ‘Is this person driving her trained medically for emergencies and has there been a background check?’ that’s a significant problem.” 

Parents have to sign a consent letter to allow a trip with a taxi company, DHHS spokesman John Martins said.

All drivers, including taxi drivers, are required to undergo background checks and training, Nadeau said.

Rotundo said she’d like more than random checks to make sure that’s being done.

Issues can’t be fixed unless the department knows about them, Nadeau said. People with issues related to rides can reach DHHS’ member services line at 1-800-977-6740.

During the Aug. 19 committee meeting, Rotundo also pressed Nadeau on the “retention payments” to CTS workers as part of a separate, one-month contract CTS and the state negotiated for the transition period with LogistiCare.

Nadeau said the state worried about losing the people who answered the phones and hurting MaineCare clients. No exit contingencies had been built into the CTS contract.

“Nobody anticipated … the way that the service was delivered,” Nadeau told Appropriations. “I don’t think you ever want to build in a transition plan; that assumes failure before you even begin.”

She said Tuesday that, similarly, no exit contingencies had been built into the new contract with LogistiCare.

But, Rotundo said, every contract ends.

“That just does not make sense to me,” Rotundo said. “Anybody who pulls together a contract knows that part of what the contract includes are provisions in case the contract needs to be dissolved. The fact that they didn’t have the foresight to do that is troubling to me and another indication of the entire mismanagement of this entire program.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link