There is no short answer here. We must solve the scalability problem. Are our businesses scalable? How do we find out? If they’re not, can we make them scalable? This is truly a daunting problem.

At the end of the day, all businesses are scalable if you are willing to put in the work and make the necessary changes for your business to be compatible with growth. Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind as you begin scaling your business is– that this takes time. You cannot expect to see the results you want overnight – scaling is truly a long-term goal.

Before you can begin making changes, you will need to take a deep dive into your company as it stands today. Look at every tiny little detail of your business – current trips, current staff, current expenses. Where you stand today, could you handle it if your trips doubled or even tripled tomorrow? Would you miss trips? Would drivers be left without a clue of whom they’re picking up or where they are supposed to be? Could billing staff keep up? If the answer is no, it’s time to make a growth plan.

Start by planning for the numbers you want to see. For example, if you want to go from 100 rides a month to 500 what do your expenses begin to look like? How many more drivers and vehicles will you need? Do you need to do more than just livery trips? Try to account for every expense in as much detail as possible. This exercise will show you what additional assets you’ll need to achieve the growth goal you’ve set for yourself. It will also show you exactly what that’s going to cost you. Start figuring out how to generate that additional cash flow – whether you take a small business loan, apply for a couple of grants, or just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and grind until the money is there.

After additional cash flow has been generated, you can start working toward your goal of additional trips. To do this, you’ll need to acquire new contracts with brokers and/or additional trips from your current brokers. Start reaching out to your current brokers and brokers you would like to work with and sell to yourself! Remember that you do not need to, nor should you, jump from where you are right now to your long-term “number of trips” goal. Make the increase slowly over time to ensure your infrastructure can handle the additional workload.

When you start to see an increase in overall trip-volume and revenue, you have reached the perfect time to begin investing in new technology to streamline your operations. Here to discuss how technology is integral to scaling is RoutingBox’s in-house Scaling Expert, Gabriel Lullo.

Gabriel has experience in owning his own firm, as well as working in firms that specialize in scaling. He has been instrumental in expanding companies by focusing on the culture, environment, customer success, and sales through implementing new technologies.  His specialty is growing a handful of employees to a large organization.

When we spoke to Gabriel, he had this to say about scaling your NEMT business, “In order to scale your business, you need to have the right partners in technology. Spending the time and energy on technology will be an essential ingredient in your effort to scale your business. The right technology will provide you with more effective costs savings and maximize your output. Systems, networks, and automation are all areas that will help minimize your manual workload and, as a result, lower your labor expenses. The beginning of the year is typically the best time to evaluate your need for new software, new systems, and new hardware. Putting in the time upfront to find the right tools, as well as putting in place the right people to support those tools, will pay off significant dividends in the long-term. This will help you scale into your 4th quarter goals and beyond. Done correctly, you will be able to ride that growth for many years.”

Continue to revisit your growth plan on a regular basis – monthly, quarterly, etc. Check your progress toward your goal, adjust any numbers that may be differently than you had initially forecasted them to be, and add in any additional needs you have encountered since putting your plan into action. As we mentioned earlier, remember that scaling your business is a long-term goal. Celebrate the small wins and be willing to adjust as needed.

Current RoutingBox user, Bryan Daparma of Hometown Taxi located in Long Island has had great success in scaling his NEMT business. He has been using RoutingBox software since 2016 and to him– that has made all the difference.

When Bryan was going through chemotherapy, he started to notice the real problem with NEMT. “When I’d leave chemo with my wife,” he said, “I’d see the same people waiting outside for their ride home as I saw on my way in over an hour earlier.”  The thought of having just gone through chemo and then having to wait over an hour to go home shook him to his core. Now, Bryan was going into work with a new mindset. He started asking more honest questions about how transportation, and NEMT specifically, is run. He learned that dispatching for NEMT operated on a “first come, first serve” basis. “What do you mean we just pick everyone up in the order they call?” Bryan asked in disbelief. He knew they could do better at Hometown Taxi. Doing better became his mission.

In 2016, when Bryan had just begun trying to bring about real industry change at Hometown Taxi, he was doing pretty much everything by hand with pen and paper. They had a variety of phones, radios, and in-car GPS systems, but something was always falling short. Again, he knew they could do better. Bryan, being the kind of person who is open to trying any and all new solutions, made sure his team knew that they could go to him with their ideas. Team members would come by his office and recommend a solution they had heard about one way or another and Bryan, true to his word, would try all of them.

Four or five dispatching solutions in, it became obvious to Bryan that none of these applications had been created by people who understood the transportation industry from a driver’s standpoint. Needless to say, when RoutingBox came to Hometown Taxi, Bryan was cautiously ready to give it a try. He had low expectations but, nevertheless, he agreed to try the basic version of RoutingBox. Immediately, he felt the impact. They were better organized which meant more trips were being completed, which in turn kept customers happy and calling into Hometown Taxi rather than their competitors. He approximated that it only took 30-45 days for him to completely buy into RoutingBox. Since upgrading his RoutingBox, Bryan has been able to triple his revenue.

To him, while his revenue growth may be impressive, it’s the fact that his overhead only doubled when his revenue tripled that has truly made the difference. “RoutingBox allows us to have minimal overhead and office staff, which lets us pay our drivers better and even give them vacation time – something totally unheard of in this industry!” Bryan said.

When Bryan began his mission to improve NEMT, he knew he’d eventually need to invest in a worthwhile technology that would help him to achieve the industry altering goal he’d set for himself. His “give everything a try” nature meant he would end up investing in multiple technologies – most of which fell just short. “Everything else I tried was good, but nothing was great until I got RoutingBox.”

Bryan’s story means so much to us, here at RoutingBox. While, of course, we are proud to have helped Hometown Taxi’s revenue triple since 2016, it is truly Bryan’s mission that makes our work so worthwhile. We do not take lightly the mission he is on to improve NEMT; in fact, we are on the very same mission. NEMT can be better, and we are proud to be working diligently on being an integral part of that change.

As you enter this new decade, with lofty goals in mind, ask more honest questions, be as open to solutions as our friend Bryan Daparma, and be willing to put in the hard work required to reach your goals. Slow progress is still progress, a mission that fills you with passion is enough to get you started and a great partner in technology will make all the difference.

The post Scaling Your NEMT Business in the New Decade. appeared first on BuiltByBits.

RoutingBox’s primary focus is to save time and reduce human error in the day to day operations of NEMT companies. With that being said, we are constantly working to increase the amount of automation incorporated into our dispatching tools.

Routes

To most effectively take advantage of our more automated tools, you’ll first need to put together routes. You’ll only need to set these up and save them once. Of course, if you need to make any changes after that, you can. While of course, this is possible with pen and paper, RoutingBox assists in the route building process by helping users visualize routes and determine what trips make the most sense. Routes are linked to either a driver or a vehicle, which makes it easy to reassign that route if something comes up – say a driver calls in sick or a vehicle breaks down. You can simply assign that route to the driver covering for the driver that called in or use a vehicle with the same capacity as the one that has broken down. Keep in mind, routes are only effective for reoccurring trips.

Route Optimization

Now that you have your routes set up, you can begin to work with Route Optimization. RoutingBox can optimize routes by sliding the pickup and drop-off times earlier or later, based on the transporter’s constraints. As well as intelligently multiloading trips to maximize completed trips and minimize unloaded vehicle time.

Select the routes as well as the trips you want the route optimizer to consider once you’ve set up the early and late allowances. When adding trips to optimize do not include any willcall trips. Since you don’t know when that passenger will be ready, it does not make sense to include them in an optimized route.

The route optimizer will run through the routes and trips you’ve selected and slide trip times around to build the most effective route for the driver. This may end up with one passenger being picked up 20 minutes early and another 10 minutes late, but it keeps the driver from doubling back and driving in circles. Since this tool is designed to run ahead of the day of trips, you will be able to give your passengers an accurate time of pick up based on the route optimization.

REMEMBER: There are a lot of settings and constraints that go into optimizing routes as every transporter functions differently. If trips are adjusted too much or too few trips are routed altering these constraints can change the output. Contact your customer success manager or our support team for help getting this tool running to the best of its ability. The good news is – once you get all the settings and allowances set up how you’d like them, you will not have to touch them again.

Auto Dispatching:

Now that you have a tool to set up routes ahead of time, here is a tool designed to be used the day of trips. This is especially helpful for willcall trips that will roll in throughout the day interrupting set routes.

To begin, you’ll need to set up a few tolerances – how far you want each driver going, how late they can be, etc.  After these parameters have been set, auto dispatching will look at one trip at a time and decide if there is a driver that can get to the pickup on time. If there is one driver that can get there on time, that driver will be assigned the trip. If there are multiple drivers that could get there on time the closest driver will be assigned. RoutingBox will look at everything the drivers are doing to make this decision, meaning, if they can see that the closest driver is just arriving at a drop off, it will understand that the driver’s vehicle will soon be empty and available to pick up this next trip. Auto dispatching will default to favoring distance to any other variable.

This tool can increase effectiveness and cut down on labor costs. Auto dispatching could help you go from three full time employees running the day of dispatching to one employee who is simply monitoring auto dispatch and making adjustments where they are needed.

These tools are incredibly helpful in saving time, increasing effectiveness, and reducing labor costs. While both Route Optimization and Auto Dispatching are revolutionary automations there is no substitute for the hard work that goes into setting them up. The more accurate your trips, routes, and parameters are, the more effective these tools will be.

The post Dispatching with RoutingBox appeared first on BuiltByBits.

Manual Entry

Transitioning from pen and paper to software can be a daunting task leaving your staff desperate for familiarity. Often, as a smaller company or a company with mostly self-pay accounts, manual trip entry is the best course of action.

Once you’ve set up clients and attached them to an account, you can begin scheduling trips for them. You do this from the scheduling screen in RoutingBox. Within manual entry you can customize a variety of factors that go into each trip. Starting with adding the client and their account to trip, you’ll then be able to add in a purpose, pick up address and drop off address. Once each address is entered, RoutingBox will generate a total trip time. From here, you can decide if you’d like your drivers to operate around the pickup time or the drop off time. Most often – the drop off time is the start time of a client’s appointment; therefore, most transporters operate around that time, letting RoutingBox automatically calculate when the driver should arrive to pick the passenger up.

Now that this stage is complete, it is important to note that this screen only shows one leg of the trip – point a to point b. You can automatically make this a return trip with the click of one button. Doing this will make the second leg a “will call” trip.

Even though trip scheduling is manual entry, this is method of booking is much more automated than your regular old pen and paper! Client records are saved and reused, common locations can be saved for quick entry, and all addresses are validated and geocoded for time, distance, and to ensure accuracy.

Repeat Trips

Depending on the transportation you do some of your trips may be repeating every week. With pen and paper, you’d need to rewrite each of these trips every week. With RoutingBox, we’ve provided you a short cut.

Start by opening the trip you’ve just scheduled. You’ll see a calendar icon between “trip date” and “status”. This icon will bring up the repeat screen. In this screen you can select days of the week that the trip will repeat, set a repeat end date, as well as exclusion dates. If at the end of the time frame you’ve set up, you get word that the trips will continue for another year, you can extend the repeat in the repeat viewer.

Using the repeat tool reduces time needed to manually enter the trip every time it repeats. Since this tool literally copies an existing trip to the needed dates, it also eliminates human error. Ideal for dialysis and similar trips that are frequently and reliably repeating.

Duplicate Trips

Often, you’ll encounter a trip that happens more than once but not on a set schedule. For these trips, the repeat tool is not ideal. Rather than setting up a repeating trip, you can create a duplicate trip.

Start by opening the trip that the client needs to duplicate. At the top left you’ll see and icon that look like two pieces of paper. This will copy the trip and allow you to set new dates for the next time the client needs to take this trip.

This tool, just like the repeat tool, helps save valuable time and reduce human errors in trip scheduling.

Trip Importer

The most advanced scheduling tool available to you in RoutingBox is the Trip Importer. This tool can revolutionize your business and save you countless hours of valuable time. There are several ways to import trips into RoutingBox. One of these is by uploading a file from a vendor. To do this, you’ll need to start by choosing an account to import and selecting the file you’d like to import. RoutingBox is capable of importing 3 types of files, CSV, Text, PDF.

The imported file will show you how many trips you have for how many clients and how many of those clients you have never transported before. These new clients will show up in green while existing clients will appear in black. Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of the trip importer, is that RoutingBox will recognize that a new client profile is needed for those trips appearing in green and will automatically create a profile for each.

While importing, RoutingBox is checking times, creating new client profiles, and verifying addresses faster than it would ever be possible to ask a human to do by hand. If there are issues with information in the import grid, those trips will remain in the grid after importing has completed. From there you are able to manually check information in each of those trips based on the error indicated by the yellow triangle at left and correct what you’re able to before importing again.

Often, the files you’re downloading from your vendor, are hand typed by someone at the broker’s offices. Human error is the cause of most errors during import – an address with a typo, the wrong city listed, etc. By using the trip importer, RoutingBox is able to identify these errors and help your staff fix them quickly and efficiently.

The trip importer screen has many customizable fields that can help to further streamline your scheduling process:

• Choose if your trips are imported based on pick up time or drop off time.
• Use past trip times – if the account always gives you an 8:30 pick up but you know they need to be picked up at 8:15 so you always change this, you can select for RoutingBox to automatically change the 8:30 to 8:15 on that trip.
• Import Miles – this option pulls miles off the files from brokers So it can be used in place of RoutingBox’s calculated mileage, or along side it to validate what the broker is sending.
• Look up location Names – selecting this will rename used addresses as the location names you have saved in the system.

Trip importer is a huge time saver and error eliminator. If you’re a larger transporter or a transporter that primarily works with companies that provide import files, trip importer has the capability to truly revolutionize your business.

Client Link

RoutingBox also has two Client Link options that can serve as a point of differentiation for your company when bidding for contracts and securing more self-pay clients. Both are white labeled, client facing scheduling options.

Booking Portal

The end user of the Booking Portal is an employee of the facility that you’re working with. The portal is ideal for hospitals and nursing homes as it helps them to know where transportation for their patients is at any given moment. It will also free some of the employee’s time by not having to call you, the transporter, for each trip they need. This in turn, saves your staff the time of needing to answer the phones and manually enter each trip. When a facility employee enters a trip, it will show up in your RoutingBox immediately.

Passenger App

The Passenger App is ideal of for self-pay clients and individuals that live on their own, perhaps with a caregiver. The client or their caregiver will set up their client account and their trips on their own through the app. They will get notifications the day before their trip, 2 hours before, and updates from their driver leading up to the trip. These reminders go right to their phone, and help to eliminate canceled trips and no shows. If this client has a will call trip, after they’ve put in all the details, all they need to do is click “I’m ready” and their driver will be notified to come pick them up.

As your business grows and requires more automated scheduling and points of differentiation, RoutingBox is prepared to grow with you. Our software is designed to streamline your business operations in order to give you more time to focus on what matters most- the customer.

The post Trip Scheduling: All the ways a trip can be scheduled in RoutingBox. appeared first on BuiltByBits.

If you work in the transportation industry, particularly the Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) segment, there are a lot of software systems out there that may make your day-to-day operations easier, faster and more efficient. But not all of these software systems offer the same benefits, and not every transporter has the same needs. If you’re looking to switch from paper records to a software system, or you’re not happy with your current software and are looking to avoid repeated mistakes, it can seem overwhelming to vet all your options and make the right choice.

When it comes to choosing the right NEMT software for your business, it’s important to know what’s available, and what questions to ask. Let’s break down some of the most beneficial features, and how they can help you streamline your business.

The Big Three: Routing, Billing, Trip Management.

Typically, when people go on the hunt for an NEMT software system, there are three main things they’re looking for help with:

1. Routing
2. Billing
3. Trip Management

These are huge. Without solid management of these three areas, your business can’t function – at least not well. Nearly every software solution on the market offers some kind of assistance in these areas, so let’s look at these more closely.

Routing

Every day, you need to put together a schedule that matches your drivers with requested trips. Ideally, you do this in a way that maximizes each driver’s time and allows you to complete as many trips as possible in a given timeframe. What if you had a button that just allowed you to push “best route” and auto-assign drivers?

While in theory that sounds like a great solution, it might not be the best solution for your business. For one, each company, broker, trip and software developer may have a different idea of what “best” means. Customers may have special needs or requests to be taken into consideration. You may have specific geography challenges, or a service area that differs from what the developers imagined. What about multiloading? Sometimes it’s a great efficiency optimizer, but sometimes it’s an unnecessary burden. You may see a lot of software providers touting a “best route” button. But you don’t need a software that tells you what the best route is – you need a software that keeps you in control of what’s “best,” and makes assignment suggestions based on that criteria. You need a routing solution that maximizes efficiency while saving you time.

Billing

Billing and reimbursements can take up an enormous amount of manpower and bandwidth. Generating the proper files required involves collecting the right information from each trip, assigning rates and codes, compiling it into a CMS-1500 or other appropriate form, and submitting to the broker or correct state department. In the complex world of NEMT billing, successfully fulfilling each requirement for billing can feel like a moving target, with so many variables affecting each trip.

Some software systems can automatically assign rates and billing codes to trips based on the proper factors, which can save you hours of work each week and eliminate the inevitability of human error. Software that generates billing forms may not be enough. Ideally, a software system that integrates appropriately with brokers and makes data collection and input easy is a better solution than one that simply generates forms.

Trip Management

Every provider has different kinds of trips from different sources. Some work with insurance companies or health plans directly. Others work with medical facilities or school districts. Others do work for day programs. Many providers get trips from brokers. Since there are so many ways that business can be coming in to your company, your software needs to be flexible enough to handle all of those different types of trips, and offer features that help you effectively manage them.

The most common source of trips in NEMT is transportation brokers. Effective information sharing between NEMT providers and brokers is crucial to the success and growth of your business. Depending on your state, brokers may handle everything from assigning trips to providers, to submitting bills to the state. Proper integration with brokers not only saves you time, it allows you to operate much more efficiently, leaving room for growth.

Broker integration is frequently more complicated than people think, but there are comprehensive solutions out there. Some of the largest brokers in the nation award “approved software provider” status to systems that successfully and fully integrate with their systems. These software providers can pull assigned trips directly from the broker into the software, and may offer features like batch sign-off and integrated electronic billing generation and submission.

When you’re choosing an NEMT software, knowing how they integrate with the brokers you use, how they assist with routing, and how they make billing easier is crucial to helping you make the right choice for your business.

But there is so much more.

Features You Might Not Know To Ask For

Just because routing, billing and trip management are important doesn’t mean they’re the only features you should be asking about. NEMT software systems run the gamut, from highly intuitive, intelligent, adaptive systems to static processes that leave little room for personalized use. Depending on the size of your business, your future goals, and your current operational structure, you may benefit from a software that offers the highest-level solutions. Alternately, you may be in a place where you can settle for a software with fewer intuitive features that simply helps you reign in the physical paperwork requirements.

So what else is out there that you should consider before making your choice?

Import Validations

Let’s be honest: getting all the information into the system is important. But if that information is riddled with inaccuracies and errors, you are, at best, playing a zero-sum game of saving time.

Validating information as it’s being imported into your software is one of the most valuable features people don’t know to look for. Let’s examine what this looks like.

When it’s time to import trips and schedule out the day, you rely on that information being accurate and correct. Some of those trips will be new riders, addresses, and circumstances, and some of those trips will be repeat riders, addresses and circumstances. This information is what allows you to schedule drivers, collect trip information, assign the correct rates and codes, and submit completed forms for billing.

As you import the information for that day’s pre-planned trips, a highly intuitive software that validates information is checking to make sure it’s correct. It’s comparing rider information to existing profiles, ensuring you don’t end up with duplicates, and not relying on a single data point (like SSN) to do so. It’s verifying addresses, both with existing customer profiles and with map databases like Google and Microsoft, to ensure the address is both correct and real. It’s also validating trip schedules, ensuring that riders don’t have conflicting trips scheduled.

If you’re not sure why this kind of data validation is absolutely crucial to your operational efficiency, check out this blog that digs into this issue a little deeper. The long and short of it, however, is that by validating information, you eliminate many potential sources for waste. You won’t accidentally send drivers to the wrong address, or an address that doesn’t exist. You won’t have to merge profiles later on when you discover that a single customer has multiple profiles with different information. By ensuring all your information is correct, you ensure you’re not wasting time adjusting for errors.

Auto-Rates And Codes

Another feature many people don’t realize may be available is the ability for your software to automatically assign rates and codes to trips as they’re imported. Billing and Medicaid reimbursement require a complex system of rate and code assignation, and errors can result in denials and delays.

NEMT providers deal with complex rate structures, as well as strict reimbursement and billing requirements. Some software allows you to set up flexible rate structures based on specific criteria, which can then be automatically assigned to each trip as it’s imported. Same for those trips that require billing codes. These can be set up to be mileage-based, zone-based, round trip vs. one way, or any other factors that affect rates. Software systems designed with these features can save you an incredible amount of time, freeing up personnel to focus on other tasks.

Audit-Readiness and Report Generation

When you’re dealing with dozens to hundreds of trips each day, there is a lot of data involved. You may need to see trips that fit a certain set of criteria, such as trips per driver or trips with specific vehicle requirements. Not every software gives you the flexibility to control what information you’re seeing, or what information goes into reports.

At some point, you may be facing a compliance audit. When these roll around, they require years’ worth of specific information proving that you’ve delivered what you’ve billed for. If you don’t have this information, it can lead to months of headaches and red tape and, in some cases, having to repay reimbursed trips that weren’t properly documented.

When it comes to audit-readiness, you need a software with an internal audit trail that assists with monitoring compliance. Features like a driver app can offer critical safeguards for compliance and reporting requirements. These apps may offer features such as automatic timestamping and geocoding, offering verification that your drivers were where they said they were (this not only holds drivers accountable, but also protects them against no-shows). By investing in a software that assists with audit-readiness and allows you to generate custom reports, you can make sure your information is always accurate, up-to-date, and compliant.

Customer Experience

While this may not be at the top of your list when it comes to prioritizing software options, it may soon become more crucial than you think. With Uber and Lyft swooping in to offer NEMT transportation options, the customer experience game is changing. It’s no longer prudent to ignore customer experience when considering your business opportunities. Software that offers features like a client app, allowing them to view, edit and track all upcoming trips, not only enhance their experience but decrease no-shows, last-minute cancellations, and mix-ups.

The Non-Features You Need

Intuitive, easy-to-use features will get you and your business pretty far. But there’s always more to the story than great tools.

Room For Growth

Assuming you’d like your business to grow, you need a software with the flexibility to not just grow with you, but actively encourage growth. This means that your software makes the entire process more efficient so your staff has the capacity to get more done. It means that as you grow and add more customers, drivers, vehicles, and services, your software has the ability to handle the extra data.

Customer Service

When you’re switching to a new system, there is a learning curve. There is training, learning, and likely some mistakes along the way. You need to know not just how to use the system, but how to maximize it for your needs. A software company that makes the sale then leaves you high and dry is doing no favors to your business. Instead, you should look for a software provider that’s committed to providing the training and support you need to effectively use their product.

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for an NEMT software system, there’s a lot to consider. It’s important to do your research and compare a few different software systems to ensure you’re getting the right one for your needs. First, start with routing, billing and trip management abilities and features. Then examine the other features that may be included, such as data validation, automatic rates and codes, reporting tools, audit trails, and client experience features.

If you’re still not sure where to start, start right here with RoutingBox. We’re experts in the NEMT industry, and our highly intuitive software was built specifically for this market. We feature everything discussed above (except the “best route” button – we have a much better solution to that), in addition to hundreds of other benefits that allow your NEMT business to grow without limitations.

The post How to Choose an NEMT Software appeared first on BuiltByBits.

If routing is so important, why are so many transporters still looking for a solution?

Why aren’t there a multitude of solutions on the market fighting for your business when it comes to routing? The answer is, unfortunately, a bit of a bummer. The reality is there are dozens of solutions fighting for your business. There are a bunch of algorithms and promises of a magic button that will put together the “best routes.” The problem is that there is no way that one solution could fit all, or even most, transporters. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from working with hundreds of transporters all across the country, it’s that each and every one is different.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that could impact how a transporter routes trips:

• Modes of transportation and special needs
  • Ambulatory, wheelchair, and stretcher trips will all tend to need different types of vehicles. Additional special needs only add to the complications.
• Geography
  • Do you have mountains or bodies of water to contend with? Do you service an island that can be hard to get to and from? Your surrounding geography can have a lot of impact on your routing.
• Service Area
  • What kind of area do you serve? A large city? Maybe a medium-sized city and the surrounding metro? Perhaps a large rural area? Maybe a combination of these? Each presents its own unique needs and challenges when it comes to routing.
• Multiloading
  • Multiloading trips can really boost efficiency, but when is it a wise move and when is it an unnecessary burden? Some payers won’t allow you to multiload their trips. Others pay you less for multiloaded trips, so it’s critical to only multiload when the efficiency boost outweighs the decreased pay.

And this is just scratching the surface!

Let’s talk a little bit about algorithms.

An algorithm is essentially a scoring model. It takes into account a set of data (in this case, your trips), it looks at the different possible combinations, and then it tries to calculate the “best” result. The reality is that when you’re dealing with hundreds of trips, unless you’re working with a supercomputer, an algorithm can’t complete calculations of all of the different possible combinations. Most algorithms are given a time restriction, so it gives you the “best” result it can come up with within an allotted amount of time.

The concept of the “best” result is another troubling factor. Each transporter may see different things as being important. One transporter may want to be 15 minutes early for every appointment, where another relies on narrow arrival windows to complete as many trips in as little time as possible. For one transporter, the least amount of travel time might be most important, whereas another might want the lowest travel distance. The reality is that for most transporters, the best solution is probably a combination of these things (and many others) and each transporter probably weighs the importance of each differently. This makes a “one-size fits all” solution impractical.

The other overwhelming challenge that NEMT providers face is the sheer amount of change that happens to their trip roster throughout the day. Our customers average about 30% change in their trip rosters from the beginning of the day to what actually happens when the day is done. Cancellations, no shows, changes in time, changes in address, unpredictable will call returns, and add-on trips all plague dispatchers and drivers alike as they try to navigate their day as efficiently as possible. Let’s say we did find a magic button that we could press at the beginning of every day to give us our best routes. By the end of the day, those “ideal” routes would only be based on inaccurate information. Ouch!

Start with the corners.

When you start a puzzle, the best practice is to start with the corners and the edges. The number of variables that surround routing are certainly tremendous. For a transportation provider to thrive, it’s important to define what your company’s goals are and what’s important to you. What are your corners and edges? Which of these variables don’t apply? Are there other variables that we didn’t discuss that impact your puzzle? What challenges are you able to anticipate each day? What are the potential road bumps that could pop up that you can’t anticipate? How do you want your staff to respond to those challenges? These are all questions that will help you solve your routing puzzle in the way that is most advantageous to your business.

The post Solving the NEMT Routing Puzzle appeared first on BuiltByBits.

In every industry, there are specified guidelines and general practices that must be followed. Compliance with these regulations is essential to the success and integrity of any organization. Failure to comply with your state and federal guidelines can result in serious consequences for your business. In this article we’ll be focusing specifically on the NEMT industry; it’s important to fully understand the required data needed since it varies per state. The requirements in this industry can vary drastically, making it difficult to keep track. By adding a software solution into your NEMT business you’re able to easily track required information, thus alleviating some of these challenges.

Required data needs to be easily accessible…

The use of electronic recordkeeping in the NEMT industry is becoming more prevalent and, quite frankly, necessary. One of the main reasons a provider needs to keep validated records of all data is to protect themselves in case of being audited. The auditor needs to have access to verified information from each trip; trying to locate and assemble all your paper records is challenging if not impossible, and you miss out on many added benefits that technology can provide.

Required information could include any or all of the following:

• The Medicaid enrollee’s name and Medicaid ID number
• The date that transportation services were provided
• The pickup and drop-off addresses
• The time you arrived for pickup
• The time you arrived at the drop-off location
• Vehicle license plate number of the vehicle used for transportation
• The driver’s license number of the driver that provided transportation services
• Printed full name and signature of the driver providing the transport
• An attestation from the driver that the trip was completed
• Proof the vehicle belongs to the correct entity and the identification number matches the ownership papers
• A signature from the client confirming that transportation services were provided
• Preauthorization of coverage before beneficiary receives transportation
  • A physician may need to authorize the need for beneficiary transportation
  • May only want to know that the beneficiary’s location drop-off was to a medical appointment
  • May expect the medical facility to phone in the medical transportation request before providing services

Some states may have qualifications for drivers such as:

• Limited number of points on their license
• Certified driver health
• Vehicle liability insurance
• Criminal background check

Before the technology was available to gather all of this information, everything had to be done manually. Manual processes, especially at a large scale, create many opportunities for human error. Whether information is inaccurate, incomplete, or even missing, the manual reporting and reviewing process is much more stressful.

The Audit Experience

At some point, your business may face a compliance audit. A compliance audit is a comprehensive review of an organization’s adherence to regulatory guidelines. This audit requires you to have a myriad of data from past activity. The point is to make sure that you provided exactly what you’ve billed for, with the correct drivers and vehicles. If you’re unable to produce the validated documentation, there can be many negative repercussions such as penalties, fines, or even prosecution. It’s crucial to take the time to learn what constitutes as fraud and abuse, and make sure you’re in compliance with all regulations.

Maintaining a consistently compliant internal audit trail is essential. You will be saving yourself from the wasted time and frustration in locating old information, and focus your and your employees’ efforts on more important things.

Working with a software that handles this process for you can get—and keep—you on a route to better business. Features within a software such as geotagging and automatic timestamping can provide the necessary data needed to prove compliance. This feature set can easily show your drivers’ exact pickup and drop-off the passenger exactly where they said they did, and at what times. By investing in such a software and properly implementing it, you’re assuring that your data collection follows all regulations, is up-to-date, and compliant.

When dealing with paper, it can be very easy for your driver to forget to gather specific pieces of information, like a signature from a passenger. In this case, the driver might be inclined to falsify the signature in order to avoid any possible repercussions with management for missing information. In this situation, you have no way of knowing if the signature or other information gathered for the trip is accurate. If you were to be audited, the falsified information could be easily identified and your company could be at risk.

Consider this same situation but instead of using a paper trail, everything was done using a software solution. This would completely prevent the opportunity to enter inaccurate information. A good NEMT software platform knows exactly what data is required for each individual trip, and allows the driver to easily view and capture this information. On top of this, software with mobile applications use geotagging and timestamping, which create an audit trail of every change or action that is made during the trip whether it was the number of stops the vehicle made or where the signature was captured and at what time. Fraud prevention is one of the biggest benefits of using the right software.

Ease your mind with the assurance of data accuracy

Giving your organization the confidence in compliance that software provides is invaluable. Investing in and correctly implementing your software can save you countless headaches by protecting yourself and your organization with honest, accurate, and verifiable data.

Taking the initiative to switch from manual data entry to streamlining it through a software is easier than you think. Many software providers offer full implementation assistance, training, and support to make it easy to transition to a new software solution so that you can focus on what matters most: serving your customers.

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One of the most important mindsets to have when using any type of software, is trust in the product you are using.  Trusting the software to work as expected and providing accurate information is the largest selling point when purchasing a software product in the first place.  The way we see it here at RoutingBox, there are three main questions a product must answer to help build that level of trust: is it transparent, is it accurate, and is it adaptable.

Transparency

Nothing helps to build trust in the software you are using better than having a product that is extremely transparent.  For example, in the NEMT industry, customers can utilize an application on their phone to schedule trips without having to talk to anyone.  They can see exactly who is coming to pick them up, what vehicle the person is driving, and what time they’re going to arrive.  Drivers who are using the same product to then pick up a customer can view information regarding the customer’s specific needs prior to picking him/her up.  Having this level of transparency lets the customers know that there is not a lot “hidden behind closed doors” so to speak.

A company that is as transparent as its product makes for an even better user experience.  Frequent contact with customers about changes in the software shows that the product is constantly being worked on and improved, and is not in a stagnant state.  By making positive improvements in the software based on user feedback, customers can know that they are being listened to and that their needs are being addressed (if possible of course).

Software companies usually find out about changes in the industry first so they can adapt their products and make sure they still work.  However, providing customers with this same information helps to show that they can count on you to provide them with information they would not normally get from outside sources, and again helps to show that the product they are using is being kept up to industry standards.

Accuracy

There’s nothing more frustrating than being presented with inaccurate information.  Data validation, above all else, is most important when attempting to build trust between a software product and a customer.  If the customer knows that everything they see on the screen is legitimate, then they can have the utmost confidence when using the product.  If the information presented is not accurate, the customer will soon find themselves looking for a new product to use.

For example, in the NEMT industry, nothing is more important than making sure your drivers are going to the correct locations to pick up a client.  If the client’s address is not validated properly, and the driver ends up at the wrong location, both parties are going to be extremely upset.  If the client is in a wheelchair and the software does not accurately display this information to the dispatcher, and they send an unqualified driver to pick up said client, both parties are again going to be extremely upset.  In short, if a customer’s trust level in technology is low, and then they start dealing with inaccurate information ruining their business, bad things are going to happen.  In this industry, drivers need to know that the address they are driving to is legitimate, how to get to the address in an efficient manner, and that the client’s needs are spelled out to a “T”.

Accuracy is also extremely important for auditing purposes.  If a company thinks that an employee is not doing his/her job very well, they can easily pull up that information.  If they think that a driver is saying they picked up a client when in actuality the driver is sitting at home watching TV, companies can track the geo-location of the driver’s device to disprove that statement.  In this industry, companies need to trust that the software product they are using will both track this information and provide access to the information when necessary.  Companies need to trust that they can manage situations like above in a professional manner and discipline the “bad apples” when situations like these occur.

Adaptability

It’s very easy to adapt when using technology.  If changes need to be made, they can be made easily and quickly without breaking the flow of a company’s day-to-day operations.  If a driver is sick or late, a company can easily move assignments around and make sure all of the clients said driver was going to pick up are taken care of.  Preventing the flow of a company from being interrupted is very important to providing exceptional service to clients.  If the customer’s needs change, the software a company is using is able to immediately reflect this so the transporter provides them with the appropriate service they need.

All of these types of changes are extremely difficult with a “paper and pen” style of work.  Using the example from above of a late driver, without technology a company would have to single-handedly contact each driver to let them know their priorities have changed, whereas software can just simply display this information to each driver within seconds.

A software that is moldable and easily adaptable is very attractive to customers because it shows them that any new business standards and industry changes can be made immediately, and possibly without affecting the look, feel, and interaction with the software itself.  Customers can trust that if they have a specific need for their business to operate, that the software, more often than not, can meet that need and satisfy all parties involved.

Conclusion

All of this trust building amounts to one thing: execution.  Clients can rely on the software scheduling their trip accurately, and use the same software to verify that it is actually happening.  Drivers using the program can see all of the same client specific information, and be able to properly transport the client to his/her destination efficiently and safely.  If there are any complications with a scheduled trip, the transporter can easily move things around and make changes so a client can still get to their destination.  The transporter can also go back through past days to see what happened and act accordingly if anything went awry.

Companies trusting that the software they are using will help them execute everything they need to within a given day, trickles all the way down to clients trusting the transporter that they’ll be able to get to their destination safely and on time.  Companies need to create a good image of themselves to increase sales and bring in more work.  Having a piece of software that is trusted to be transparent, accurate, and adaptable makes everyone’s job that much easier.

The post Building Trust with Customers Through the Use of Software in the NEMT Industry appeared first on BuiltByBits.

Customer service has become increasingly important over the years as it correlates directly to the success of a business. Providing excellent customer service within your operations is vital to your business’ expansion. You’re more likely to retain current customers as well as gain new ones if you’re ensuring the customer has a good experience from the moment they call in for a ride to their final drop off. A key part of providing great customer service in the non-emergency medical transportation industry is being organized and utilizing the resources available at your disposal. There are several software programs out there designed specifically for non-emergency medical transportation that can clean up your day to day operations; freeing up time for you to focus on the customer.

How Exactly Does Software Improve Customer Service?

A quality software is going to help you and your staff reduce the amount of manual data entry; leaving less room for human errors to occur. Many software services offer the capability to import trips directly into the system from the account’s portal or via email attachments so you can feel confident knowing the information you’re working with is accurate. This eliminates the need to enter and schedule trips by hand which prevents some of the most common negative customer experiences such as missed pickups, passengers being picked up or dropped off later than scheduled, wasted time, and more.

By utilizing a software designed specifically for non-emergency medical transportation, you’re able to streamline communications. With precise and up to date information just a click away, dispatchers can reference and relay new trips or changes to drivers in a timely manner. If your software has an integrated application or paging system, the latest trip updates can easily be passed along to your drivers in a HIPPA compliant manner. This allows drivers to stay on top of things and maximize their time management.

Software can also help to ensure that trips are priced correctly.  When it comes time to bill, the accurate, required information is submitted to the payer directly. This helps to reduce customer dissatisfaction and disputes over trip pricing. Implementing a software to assist with billing, makes the tedious process much quicker and easier, which in turn allows you to focus on the customer and growth of your business.

Conclusion:

Software has many great benefits from compliancy to accuracy. While it can be an investment, it’s one that will improve your business’ operations significantly. Organization and accuracy are two vital skills to have in the non-emergency medical transportation business and software can offer you both. As a result, you may find passengers are more likely to ride with you because you’re able to offer them a smooth experience from start to finish. The right software solution streamlines your operations; allowing you to focus on what truly matters-the customer.

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With the various data entry options surrounding the NEMT industry, whether manual or through software, it’s hard to know which option is best for your organization. By switching to a software that streamlines your data entry, the time and money you save can be reallocated to places that could benefit from more attention. There are various reasons to switch from manual data entry to a software that can streamline the process. Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering a software solution:

1. Manual Data Entry Is Time Consuming

Companies can spend countless hours every day manually entering data from their NEMT trips. Transferring information from the trip sheets you gave to your drivers into manually typed information can waste vital time that your organization may not have. If manual data entry is not one of the designated core tasks of the business, it can divert your employees focus from completing more valuable tasks. Data entry forces employees to allocate their time towards a short-term goal, instead of the greater, long-term goal.

2. Data Entry Can Be Expensive

Some organizations choose to hire companies to enter their data for them or may even hire an employee solely dedicated to data entry. Both options are very costly and can impact the organization negatively.

Here’s an example of the financial stress that manual data entry can cause your organization:

Let’s say a mid-sized company hires a data entry employee who works on manually entering data for 8 hours every day. If it takes about 4 minutes to enter all the data for one NEMT trip into the system, and there are roughly 4,000 trips each month, this employee is spending 16,000 minutes, or, about 267 hours each month doing manual data entry. They’re not only paying this employee for their time, but the amount of time wasted is costing countless dollars by not being able to allocate this employee to more important things. This seems like a waste of time and money since this process can easily be replaced by a software designed for data entry.

3. Higher Data Inaccuracy Rate

Errors such as: illegible handwriting, inadequate training of data entry professionals, copy and paste errors, misinterpretation of wording, and misspellings. The repercussions for any of these errors occurring can be debilitating for the company. Hopefully the organization can identify the error and make the necessary changes to recover the integrity of the data.

4. Software Validation and Industry Compliance

Without data validation, significant errors can be made. Focusing on the NEMT industry, one of the main repercussions for bad data is not getting accurately paid for completed trips. This consequence along with many others, prove why it’s important to implement best practices when capturing and entering data.

Compliance with the regulations for any industry is a crucial part to a company’s success. Failure to comply with state and federal procedures can have a very serious impact. For these reasons, you will want to make sure all your data is validated and compliant. Using software to assist with validating your data will in turn assist with compliance.

5. Reporting Becomes More Valuable

Reporting becomes more extensive, useful and readily available. With the amount of time it takes to manually enter data, there’s hardly any time left to analyze, strategize and plan to improve your current processes. With manual data entry, reporting takes the back seat in your organizations procedures. It takes a good amount of time to enter the data which will be used to generate reports.

Come audit time, you do not want to have poor or missing data. Reports are a good way to discover or confirm suspected issues. Many times, you may not know a problem exists. Reporting can provide insight into what is working and what needs to be improved on. It’s circumstances like this where reports prove their value. They can easily show you where the error exists. For the purposes of protecting a company and maintaining compliance within its industry, it’s recommended that companies use software to provide data validation. If your driver accidentally marked the pickup and drop off times as the same time, you’re not going to get paid for that trip since no mileage was used. Software could have easily identified this problem and calculated the bill amount based on the mileage it tracked using geocoding. If these companies were to manually create reports based off the data that was manually entered, this would not be a good use of time. If any data was entered incorrectly, the reports would be generated based off incorrect data. It’s best to avoid these possibilities and use a software that provides and supports data validation and industry compliance.

6. On-The-Go Driver Needs

When on the road, drivers need a quick and efficient system to assist with their trip data entry. A mobile app with designated software will remove the possibility of error from manual data entry and eases the process of capturing and entering data into the system. There will no longer be human error such as: illegible writing, inaccurate data, and “typos”. As an NEMT provider, you need accurate information for a variety of reasons such as: audit trails, maintaining compliance and driver/ rider integrity. Data including automatic geocoding and time stamps, eliminates any possibilities for false information.

Conclusion:

Manual data entry is one of the most inefficient ways to keep track of your organization’s data. When searching for a software solution for data entry, it’s important to find one that gives your company it’s time and data validation assurance back. Instead of piecing together your manually entered data, invest in a system that’s built to create a higher efficiency and productivity working environment. Protect your organization from any possible human error or inaccurate data by implementing a software that validates your data to ensure you’re compliant within your given industry.

It’s time to use data to your advantage and stop allowing it to sit in forgotten or overlooked folders where it’s unusable. With a software that assists with data entry, you can improve your process and creating a better business.

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