For a broker-assigned trip, who gets the bill, Medicaid or the broker?

In most programs the broker is the one you invoice, and your agreement sets what it pays. New York is the main exception. You confirm the completed ride in the broker's system, which issues a prior authorization number, and then claim the ride from eMedNY, New York's Medicaid payment system, within 90 days of the service date.

When do brokers pay for completed trips?

Payment timing is written into each contract. Verida, the broker for Indiana's fee-for-service members, works to a Wednesday cutoff, and clean claims in by then are paid within 14 days. MediTrans's Louisiana claims policy gives it 15 calendar days to pay nine in ten clean claims and 30 days to pay all of them, and its provider page lists a payment run every other Friday. WellTrans runs two payment dates each month and pays each invoice inside 30 days of receiving it. MTM Health's standard contract sets a 30-day payment term, counted from online submission, for invoices it accepts without dispute.

What happens if I submit a broker trip after the deadline?

You usually lose it. At WellTrans, an invoice that arrives more than 90 days past the service date is disallowed in full. MTM Health's standard contract treats a claim older than 90 days as waived unless its client sets a different limit. Late eligibility can extend a window: MediTrans allows 180 days from the member's linkage, and New York opens a 120-day attestation window once retroactive eligibility posts.

Why did the broker pay less than I invoiced?

Common reasons are a rate cap, the broker's own mileage figure, shared-ride pricing, a co-payment you were expected to collect, or a deduction. WellTrans, for example, pays whichever is smaller, your charge or the amount in its rate table, and it measures miles by the shortest route. Tie each short line to its cause before you dispute it.

May I charge the rider if the broker refuses to pay?

Usually not. Under 42 CFR 447.15, Medicaid providers must treat what the program pays, plus any cost sharing it allows, as payment in full. Under MTM Health's standard contract, you cannot bill a member even if nobody else pays you. The one exception is a copay or other fee that MTM, or the program it works for, has authorized. WellTrans's agreement leaves one narrow opening: where the law permits, you may bill a rider for a trip WellTrans refused over a missed covered appointment.

Why is a trip I submitted missing from the broker's statement?

It may never have made it into processing. MediTrans parks rejected claims in its provider portal with the reason attached, and leaves them off the remittance advice because they never entered claims processing. Look up the portal status of every trip missing from a statement, fix the problem, and resubmit before the filing window closes.

Billing

Getting paid by NEMT brokers: trip submission, broker portals, and payment statements

Updated September 29, 20269 min read

Broker billing is contract billing. You invoice the broker, not Medicaid, for each trip it assigned, after closing the trip with the times, signatures, and vehicle details your agreement lists. Filing windows range from 60 days at WellTrans to 365 days at MediTrans. Published payment terms for clean trips run from 14 to 30 days, and brokers subtract penalties and overpayments from later payments, so check every statement line.

On this page

Broker billing follows your contract, not the state manual

Money in a broker program moves in a chain: Medicaid or a health plan funds the broker, and the broker funds you. You are not coding a claim for the state. You are showing the broker that you ran a trip it assigned, the way your agreement says, and asking for the rate that agreement sets.

That changes four things compared with billing Medicaid directly:

The rate. It comes from your agreement. WellTrans’s Indiana contract caps payment at the smaller of your charge and its rate table. Verida builds its Indiana rates from the state fee schedule but may agree to better or special rates provider by provider. The broker rates guide explains how these schedules are built.
What makes a trip payable. An assignment from the broker, plus drivers and vehicles it approved. WellTrans pays nothing for a service it did not authorize in advance with a job number. MTM Health’s standard contract pays nothing for trips that used a driver, attendant, or vehicle MTM had not credentialed.
Where the bill goes. Into the broker’s system. Modivcare routes billing and claims questions through its Transportation Portal. WellTrans wants a signed trip log behind every billed trip, on its own log and summary invoice forms unless it agrees in writing to something else.
Who you cannot bill. The rider. MTM Health’s standard contract forbids billing members, and that holds even if neither MTM nor its client pays you, apart from an authorized copay. That follows the federal rule at 42 CFR 447.15, which admits to Medicaid only providers that take the program’s payment, plus allowed cost sharing, as payment in full.

New York runs on a different model. The statewide broker, Medical Answering Services (MAS), hands you the trip, and you confirm in its system that the ride took place. That confirmation, called attestation, produces a prior authorization number, 11 digits long, that shows up on your transportation roster. The claim then goes to eMedNY, the state’s Medicaid claims system, carrying that number. Each prior approval needs its own claim form.

What a broker needs before it will pay

A broker pays a trip when the record matches the assignment. Missing one field is enough for a denial. Here is what current broker rules ask for.

Item	Why it matters	Example
Trip ID	Ties your bill to the broker’s assignment	MTM Health’s Virginia handbook: no ride without MTM’s unique trip ID
Times	Shows the ride happened when scheduled	MTM Health’s Virginia electronic trip log: the pickup time, both scheduled and actual, plus departure and arrival
Member signature	Confirms the rider was on board	Required by MTM Health in Virginia, MediTrans in Louisiana, and WellTrans in Indiana
Driver and vehicle	Shows credentialed staff and equipment ran it	MediTrans’s clean-claim list includes the driver’s name and signature and the VIN’s final four digits
Trip status	Separates completed rides from cancellations	MTM Health denies a Virginia claim when the trip no longer shows as completed at submission

Signature rules are strict. Under WellTrans’s agreement, when the rider cannot sign, someone from the household, a caretaker, or a staff member at the drop-off facility signs with their own name and notes how they are related to the rider. Drivers and attendants are barred from signing in the rider’s place. WellTrans refuses trips that carry only initials or a remark that the rider was unable to sign.

Location data is part of the record too. In Virginia, MTM Health requires automatic vehicle location running from start to finish on each ride, and it scores providers on trips whose recorded miles and minutes do not fit together.

A trip where nobody rode is not a billable trip. Louisiana’s 2026 managed care manual says so directly for scheduled trips in which no enrollee was transported. Report no-shows and cancellations the way your broker asks, and keep them out of your invoices. The documentation guide and the trip log template cover the full record.

Close the trip first, then submit it

Broker billing has two steps: confirming the trip is complete, then invoicing it. Both have clocks.

Completion. New York allows 30 days from the ride for attestation. Corrections to an authorization have to be requested before you attest, not after. MTM Health’s Virginia program looks at trip status at the moment you submit, so close the trip in its system before you bill it.

Submission. Brokers want trips soon after they happen:

SafeRide Health wants each trip billed the day it runs, including timestamps plus the driver and the vehicle.
Verida’s Indiana fee-for-service payments run on a Wednesday cutoff, so Wednesday becomes your weekly billing deadline there.
MediTrans asks for trip completion paperwork within 24 hours of each ride. Its electronic system answers every claim with an immediate accept or reject, while paper claims can take up to 5 days just to be entered.
WellTrans wants a completed summary invoice with each batch of trip logs you send.

Billing every day also surfaces a denial while the details are fresh enough to fix. Billing once a month can use up half of a 60-day window before a trip is even submitted.

Filing deadlines, and the exceptions that extend them

Every agreement sets a filing limit, and missing it usually forfeits the trip. When you bill Medicaid directly, 42 CFR 447.45 caps the state’s claim deadline at 12 months from the service date, and a state can set a shorter limit, as New York does with 90 days. Broker windows are often shorter still.

Broker or program	Filing window	What moves the clock
WellTrans, Indiana	60 days. Nothing is paid on an invoice more than 90 days past the service date.	When Medicare has to be billed first, the window opens when Medicare denies the claim, and a copy of that denial goes with your invoice.
MTM Health, standard contract (2023 version)	90 days from the service date, unless MTM’s client requires a different period	A late claim cannot be paid, and the contract treats the right to payment as waived.
MTM Health in Virginia, fee-for-service rides from October 1, 2026	Six months for a clean claim	Trips sent to Medicare first get six months from Medicare’s denial.
MediTrans, Louisiana	365 days	Retroactive eligibility: the later of 365 days from the ride or 180 days from the member’s linkage to MediTrans.
New York Medicaid, where the broker assigns and the state pays	Attestation: 30 days. eMedNY claim: 90 days from the ride.	Retroactive eligibility: the attestation window is 120 days from the day eligibility posts in the state’s verification system.

Keep a timely filing date on every open trip. The shortest window among your brokers is the one your routine has to beat.

When broker money arrives

Payment timing is also set by contract. Examples from published agreements and manuals:

Verida (Indiana fee-for-service): a weekly Wednesday cutoff, with clean claims paid within two weeks by check or EFT, and each payment cycle comes with a remittance advice listing the claims.
MediTrans (Louisiana): its provider page lists a payment run every other Friday. Its claims policy requires nine in ten clean claims paid within 15 calendar days of receipt, and every clean claim within 30. Interest of 12 percent a year, calculated by the day, accrues on any payable clean claim still open after the 30-day deadline.
WellTrans (Indiana): two payment dates a month, with each invoice paid inside 30 days of submission. Its contract also allows it to delay paying you until its own client pays it.
MTM Health (standard contract): a 30-day payment term, counted from online submission, on invoices it does not contest.
SafeRide Health: payment inside 30 days once a ride is finished and documented properly.

Payment paperwork comes first. WellTrans’s agreement packet includes a W-9 and an electronic funds transfer authorization, so file both before your first invoice.

Weekly billing combined with a 30-day payment term leaves some trips unpaid for more than five weeks. Plan payroll around the slowest broker, and see NEMT cash flow for the forecast.

Why the payment is smaller than the invoice

A broker statement rarely equals the invoice total. Most differences fall into one of these groups, all drawn from current agreements.

Rate cap. WellTrans never pays more than the contract rate, whatever you charge. Billing above the rate does not raise the payment.
The broker’s mileage. WellTrans’s mapping software measures the shortest route between pickup and drop-off, and the result is rounded to a whole mile. WellTrans has the last word on that number, and completing the trip means you accepted it, so raise a mileage error before the ride.
Shared-ride pricing. WellTrans reviews bills for trips that meet its shared-ride definition and pays those at the shared rate, whether or not they rode in one van. MTM Health calculates Virginia payments from its rate sheet using mileage, mode, and multiloading.
Co-payments. Where riders owe a copay, WellTrans expects you to collect it and deducts it from what it pays.
Service charges. WellTrans may take the cost of producing the training materials it hands out off your invoice. It also deducts credentialing fees at cost if you use its screening vendor.
Liquidated damages, the preset penalty amounts in the contract. MTM Health can withhold them from money it owes you and pass through penalties its own client assesses. WellTrans’s schedule charges $50 per invoiced trip that never ran, unless you prove a clerical error, and it must give 10 days’ written notice before imposing damages.
Overpayment recovery. MTM Health and WellTrans both offset overpayments against future payments. MediTrans notifies you by certified mail, gives you a 30-day window to request a second look, and may recover the money gradually from later payments.
Attendance checks. WellTrans pays a trip only if the rider actually went to a covered medical visit. When a clinic reports a no-show and you send no written answer within 30 days, WellTrans counts the silence as confirmation and deducts the trip from your next payment.

Reconciling each broker statement

Reconcile every statement the week it arrives, while disputes are still inside their windows.

Pull your trips for the pay period. List every completed trip leg you submitted, with its trip ID and expected amount.
Match by trip ID. Rider names repeat and drift in spelling. Trip IDs do not.
Sort every line. Paid as expected, paid at a different amount, denied, or a deduction that is not tied to a trip.
Chase the missing trips. A trip on your list but not on the statement may have been rejected before processing. MediTrans, for example, holds a rejected claim in its portal with the reason and leaves it off the remittance entirely.
Explain every short payment. Check it against the eight causes above before you dispute it.
Dispute inside the window. MediTrans accepts disputes for 180 calendar days from a denial and resolves them within 30 business days. MTM Health’s Virginia program allows 365 days to appeal in its online claims portal. WellTrans accepts a returned claim again once you supply what was missing.
Report your own errors. In Virginia, a claim sent by mistake should be reported right away to your MTM Health field monitor, who arranges the void. Separately, federal law sets 60 days from identifying a Medicaid overpayment to report it and pay it back.

Broker changes need the same care. Trips before a switch date still bill to the outgoing broker, under its deadlines. Virginia’s fee-for-service program, for example, sends trips dated October 1, 2026 and later to MTM Health, while earlier rides stay with Modivcare.

The weekly routine for matching scheduled, completed, billed, and paid trips across every payer is in NEMT trip reconciliation. Reading the codes on an electronic statement is covered in NEMT remittance advice. For payments that run late, see late broker payments.

Keeping broker trips payable in HealthRide

Trips from the brokers HealthRide connects with, like MTM, Alivi and Sentry, arrive on your board without anyone retyping them. Each ride keeps its signatures, GPS miles, on-time record, and any no-show wait time, and you can export the trip log as a spreadsheet or PDF for a broker review. Broker payments are recorded alongside every other payment, so the payer report shows the balance each broker still owes. See broker connections.

Frequently asked questions

For a broker-assigned trip, who gets the bill, Medicaid or the broker?: In most programs the broker is the one you invoice, and your agreement sets what it pays. New York is the main exception. You confirm the completed ride in the broker's system, which issues a prior authorization number, and then claim the ride from eMedNY, New York's Medicaid payment system, within 90 days of the service date.
When do brokers pay for completed trips?: Payment timing is written into each contract. Verida, the broker for Indiana's fee-for-service members, works to a Wednesday cutoff, and clean claims in by then are paid within 14 days. MediTrans's Louisiana claims policy gives it 15 calendar days to pay nine in ten clean claims and 30 days to pay all of them, and its provider page lists a payment run every other Friday. WellTrans runs two payment dates each month and pays each invoice inside 30 days of receiving it. MTM Health's standard contract sets a 30-day payment term, counted from online submission, for invoices it accepts without dispute.
What happens if I submit a broker trip after the deadline?: You usually lose it. At WellTrans, an invoice that arrives more than 90 days past the service date is disallowed in full. MTM Health's standard contract treats a claim older than 90 days as waived unless its client sets a different limit. Late eligibility can extend a window: MediTrans allows 180 days from the member's linkage, and New York opens a 120-day attestation window once retroactive eligibility posts.
Why did the broker pay less than I invoiced?: Common reasons are a rate cap, the broker's own mileage figure, shared-ride pricing, a co-payment you were expected to collect, or a deduction. WellTrans, for example, pays whichever is smaller, your charge or the amount in its rate table, and it measures miles by the shortest route. Tie each short line to its cause before you dispute it.
May I charge the rider if the broker refuses to pay?: Usually not. Under 42 CFR 447.15, Medicaid providers must treat what the program pays, plus any cost sharing it allows, as payment in full. Under MTM Health's standard contract, you cannot bill a member even if nobody else pays you. The one exception is a copay or other fee that MTM, or the program it works for, has authorized. WellTrans's agreement leaves one narrow opening: where the law permits, you may bill a rider for a trip WellTrans refused over a missed covered appointment.
Why is a trip I submitted missing from the broker's statement?: It may never have made it into processing. MediTrans parks rejected claims in its provider portal with the reason attached, and leaves them off the remittance advice because they never entered claims processing. Look up the portal status of every trip missing from a statement, fix the problem, and resubmit before the filing window closes.