Ending a broker contract: notice periods, final payments, and riders mid-schedule

Read the exit terms before you decide

The termination section of your broker agreement decides how long you stay, what you owe on the way out, and when the last check arrives. Pull out the signed copy, not a sample, and find five things: the term, the notice for leaving without cause, the notice to stop a renewal, the rules for leaving over a breach, and the list of reasons the broker can end things at once.

Two published agreements show how much these terms can differ:

Route-based work can carry its own clock. MART’s Massachusetts provider amendment requires a minimum of 60 days’ written notice to hand back awarded program routes, and you keep running them during those 60 days. Closing your office temporarily also needs written notice a week ahead. If the closure runs past 30 days, MART needs further written documentation of your plans, and without it MART moves to terminate.

Low volume does not change the notice rules. MTM’s agreement promises no minimum trip volume, and a provider who wants out because too few trips come in still owes the 30 days’ notice.

Give notice the way the contract requires

A notice sent the wrong way may not count, or may count later than you planned. Follow the notice section to the letter.

1. Write it down. Both agreements require written notice. State that you are ending the agreement, cite the section you are using, and give your last day of service.
2. Use a delivery method the contract counts. MTM treats a hand-delivered notice as given that day, courier delivery as given on the date delivered or refused, and certified mail as delivered once three mail delivery days have passed since mailing. Under WellTrans’s agreement, a notice sent by a national overnight carrier lands the day after it ships, and certified mail counts three days after mailing.
3. Send it to the named address. Use the notice address and “attention” line printed in the agreement, not your account manager’s inbox, unless the contract says email counts.
4. Count from the delivery date. Add a few days of margin so a slow delivery does not push your exit past a pay cycle or a renewal date.
5. List what you are carrying. Attach the standing orders and recurring routes you run for that broker, with the last date you will cover each. It makes the handoff faster and shows good faith.

File the receipt, the tracking record, and your copy of the letter with the contract.

Run out the notice period

Notice starts the final stretch. Every obligation in the contract stays in force until your last day.

• Assigned trips get run. MTM’s agreement makes you cover every trip already on your schedule through the 30 days. Leave them undone and MTM can assess liquidated damages and deduct its cost of rebooking those trips with another provider.
• Mass reroutes count against you. WellTrans treats sending back over 15% of trips a day, on average, after notice as improper notice. The price of that failure is steep: WellTrans’s schedule says improper notice forfeits all outstanding amounts due to you. The agreement leaves room to discuss circumstances outside your control.
• Standards still apply. On-time targets, incident reporting deadlines, and credential rules stay in force until the last day. A driver whose license lapses in week three still cannot run a paid trip, because MTM does not pay when a driver’s credentials have lapsed.

See broker penalties for the charges that keep running during notice.

Riders who are mid-schedule

The riders are the broker’s program members, not your customers. Under MTM’s agreement, every trip, standing ones too, can be given to or taken from a provider as MTM alone decides. Your job is to hand them over cleanly.

• Tell the broker every standing order you run for its members, with days, times, level of service, and your last covered date. Ask for written confirmation that each one has a new provider before your final week. Our standing orders guide covers keeping that list accurate.
• Send questions back to the broker. A dialysis rider who asks what happens next should keep booking through the broker’s member line. The broker assigns the next provider.
• Leave the member list alone. MTM’s agreement treats information about its members as confidential, limits its use to performing the agreement, bars using its confidential information to build a competing business, and keeps those promises in force after termination. WellTrans’s agreement limits the use of information you receive to carrying out the agreement.
• Do not bill riders. MTM’s agreement makes MTM your only source of payment for these trips and bars billing its client’s members, even when MTM itself fails to pay.

Private-pay riders and facility agreements you signed yourself are a separate matter. They continue under their own terms.

Final claims and holdbacks

The money side of an exit runs for months after your last trip. Treat it as its own project.

Bill everything inside the window. Filing limits keep running after you leave:

Expect a holdback. Once notice is given, MTM holds payment on every unpaid claim until it has received and audited the service records and claims. It can then subtract liquidated damages and other noncompliance charges, or recover sums it paid you in error. WellTrans can offset duplicate payments or overpayments against later payments. For trips it finds the rider never attended, it deducts the cost from the next payment, and if no payment is due, you must pay it back within 30 days of a written demand.

Keep appealing denials. MTM’s agreement preserves each side’s rights and duties for services performed before termination, and in Virginia, MTM Health accepts appeals of denied claims for up to 365 calendar days. See late broker payments for reconciling what arrives against what you billed.

Plan the cash with an example like this one. A fleet earns $20,000 a month from one broker, which pays 30 days after each submission, and it sends 30 days’ notice on March 1. Under a holdback clause like MTM’s, every claim still unpaid on March 1, roughly a month of revenue here, waits for the broker’s audit. That money can arrive weeks late, or short after offsets. A reserve of one to two months of that broker’s revenue, or credit arranged before sending notice, covers the gap. Our cash flow guide walks through building that reserve.

How long exit records must be kept

Leaving the network does not end your record duties. Audits can reach back years.

Keep trip logs with signatures, GPS records, driver and vehicle files, incident and accident reports, payment statements, and every letter about the termination. MTM’s agreement also says records it requests during audits are not returned, so keep your own copies.

Patient information needs one more step. WellTrans’s business associate terms require returning or destroying the protected health information you hold when the agreement ends, and certifying destruction if you choose it. Where returning or destroying it is not feasible, you must keep protecting it and limit its use. Ask the broker in writing how it wants you to handle trip records you are still required to keep, and file its answer.

When the broker ends the contract

A broker can end the relationship too, and often faster than you can. MTM’s agreement lets it terminate immediately if you breach it, if its client loses funding for MTM’s contract or that contract ends for any reason, if your conduct may affect member safety in MTM’s judgment, if a bankruptcy petition is filed by or against you, if its client asks for your removal, or for other good cause. When the cause is the broker losing its own state or plan contract, see our guide to a broker transition.

If a termination notice arrives:

1. Ask in writing for the specific reason and the section it relies on.
2. Follow the dispute steps in the agreement. WellTrans’s agreement has each side name a senior manager first and then sends the matter to arbitration.
3. Confirm the final claims process and deadline, then bill everything.
4. Check your other payers. Losing a broker contract does not by itself end your Medicaid enrollment with the state. A state termination reaches further: under 42 CFR 455.416, a state must deny or end enrollment for a provider terminated by Medicare or by another state’s Medicaid program and listed in the federal termination database.

Rejoining later

Coming back to a network means starting fresh. MTM Health’s Rhode Island page describes its recruiting process as application, credentialing, and contracting, and it keeps a waitlist, estimating 8 to 12 months before new providers get the chance to contract. Some networks close entirely when they have enough providers; see when a broker network is full for how that works.

Your exit shapes your return. A provider who served full notice, ran every assigned trip, and closed out claims cleanly is an easier yes than one who left with trips unrun and charges outstanding. Individual drivers can carry history too: MTM Health’s Virginia handbook bars a driver who commits another violation after completing retraining for a serious one from driving for any health plan MTM manages. When you reapply, expect to credential every driver and vehicle again. Our guides to broker credentialing and winning broker contracts cover the process.

Closing out a broker in HealthRide

HealthRide’s payer summary lists, for each payer, what is still owed alongside completed trips and revenue billed, which makes it easier to track a departing broker’s final payments against what you billed. Trip logs export as a spreadsheet or print-ready PDF with scheduled and actual times, driver, vehicle, and GPS-verified miles, so the records you must keep are in order. When the broker takes back a standing order, ending that recurring series removes its remaining future trips from your schedule. See the reports.