Community in Motion provider guide: Apple Health rides in southwest Washington

Community in Motion in brief

Community in Motion (CiM) is a Vancouver nonprofit and the Washington Health Care Authority’s (HCA) ride broker for Apple Health clients in five southwest Washington counties. The agency traces its roots to 1946 in Clark County. It was renamed Human Services Council in 1990, then Community in Motion in 2021, a change meant to put its transportation work up front. Its Medicaid ride program began in 1995. HCA’s broker lists still show the former name in parentheses, and the provider portal address uses the old initials, so expect both.

NEMT is one of several CiM programs. The agency also runs Employment Transportation, Reserve-A-Ride for people without Medicaid who need life-sustaining medical trips, Sponsor-A-Ride, a North County Shuttle, the Volunteers in Motion driver program, and mobility management. Its pricing form covers several of those programs at once, so a vendor can bid for more than Medicaid work. Our Washington state guide lists the other five brokers.

Getting in: a letter of interest, then an RFQ

CiM signs vendors through a letter of interest followed by a qualification round, and every carrier needs a contract. Nobody drives CiM riders on a handshake.

1. Send a Letter of Interest. The form on CiM’s Our Vendors page asks for your legal name, your Washington UBI number, how long you have been in business as a transportation provider, your address and point of contact, the counties you would cover, and whether you run ambulatory or non-ambulatory service. Email it to jessicam@communityinmotion.org.
2. Wait for a Request for Qualifications. CiM opens an RFQ when ridership calls for a particular transportation type or county, and it contacts every company with a letter on file when one is released.
3. Answer the RFQ. Submit the application packet and supporting documents by the deadline.
4. Allow about four months. A review committee reads the applications after the deadline, and CiM then tells each applicant whether it will offer an agreement.
5. Sign as written. Successful applicants get a contract with CiM’s Special Terms and Conditions, which are not negotiable.

HCA’s guidance to new service providers sends them to the regional broker for their counties, and WAC 182-546-6200 ties broker payment to a signed subcontract. In these five counties, CiM is that broker. Our broker contracts guide has tips for standing out once an RFQ opens.

What the RFQ asks for

CiM’s current RFQ FAQ, posted on its vendor page, sets the minimum qualifications:

• A current Washington master business license, plus a city business license wherever you operate
• Compliance with the ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and any other licenses and laws that apply
• Insurance that meets local, state, and federal requirements and CiM’s contract standards
• At least two years of demonstrated experience transporting people for pay, with preference for medical or social service transportation
• Dedicated phone and fax lines and internet for monthly service and billing communication
• Staff available during operating hours to handle road emergencies, trip requests, and complaints
• Bookkeeping that follows generally accepted accounting principles

The application packet then asks for three business reference letters, insurance certificates, state and city business licenses, and your last financial audit. It also requires a set of written policies: non-discrimination, driver training and orientation, vehicle maintenance schedule, disaster preparedness, customer complaints, and ADA and Title VI. Our guide to writing a policies and procedures manual shows how to build those.

The Subcontractor Profile, effective January 1, 2026, fills in the operating picture.

• Primary service area. Counties where your trips both start and end.
• Secondary service area. Trips that start in your primary county and end in another.
• Contiguous areas. Nearby places you will serve, with options such as the Portland metro counties, Astoria, Rainier, Hood River, and The Dalles in Oregon, and Lewis, Pacific, Benton, and Yakima counties in Washington.
• Long-distance destinations. Places such as Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, or Spokane County that you would drive to.
• Minors. Whether you carry children under 10 with a parent or guardian, children 10 to 12 without one, and teens 12 to 18 with or without an escort, and whether you supply car or booster seats.
• Limits. Passenger limits by vehicle and any trips you will not accept.
• Written policies. Service and confidentiality standards, grievances, maintenance, safety, insurance, trip documentation, billing, passenger assistance, mandatory reporting, accident and incident investigation, wheelchair securement and lift operation where relevant, and emergency preparedness, plus personnel policies covering screening, your drug and alcohol policy, training, and corrective action.

Our guide to transporting children in NEMT covers the car seat and escort side of that form.

How CiM prices and assigns trips

CiM authorizes non-ambulance rides by choosing the least costly mode suited to each rider: fixed-route bus, paratransit, cabulance, taxi, volunteer service, gas vouchers, or reimbursement for riders who drive themselves. For the vehicle trips, rates start with your proposal. CiM’s pricing form (Section VI.A, revised January 28, 2026) asks each vendor to name its charges by mode: ambulatory, non-ambulatory wheelchair, stretcher, and volunteer driver.

Group and shared rides get their own authorization numbers. The form calls it a shared ride when all riders have one pickup address and one drop-off address in common, and a group ride when either their pickup or their drop-off addresses differ. It also asks for fiscal documentation behind any per-trip price, such as posted rates.

Section 2 of the form carries a pricing condition to read closely. You list the rates you charge the general public and other contract payers, and services you offer others cannot be billed at a lower rate than CiM pays. The form asks for your posted or published rates as support, so keep your private pay rate sheet consistent with what you propose.

A worked example, using made-up numbers: a vendor that proposes a $25 wheelchair pick-up fee and $3.00 a mile would bill $61 for a 12-mile wheelchair trip, before any flat fees. The same trip picked up at 9 p.m. would add the vendor’s proposed after-hours fee.

Winning the proposal does not guarantee work. CiM’s FAQ says it cannot promise any volume, and that trips go mainly by the rate at which each provider offers the service level that best fits the rider. That fits the state’s design. HCA sets no statewide NEMT rates, trip money passes straight through to providers, and brokers earn incentives when their average trip cost falls. Our guide to pricing NEMT trips walks through building a rate that still covers your costs.

Driver standards

CiM’s vendor FAQ lists four certifications every driver under its contract must hold:

• Defensive driving
• CPR and first aid
• Child safety seat training
• Passenger assistance

On top of those, CiM looks at each driver’s driving abstract, criminal background check results, and drug and alcohol test results. Drivers sign a self-disclosure statement to CiM and HCA covering past convictions, findings of abuse or exploitation, protection order violations, and licensing board sanctions for abuse, neglect, or exploitation. The same form authorizes name and fingerprint checks against the Washington Secretary’s List of Crimes and Negative Actions. Our guides to driver background checks and CPR and first aid cover both requirements.

CiM’s Driver’s Code of Professional Conduct applies to drivers and driver’s assistants. Among its rules:

• Wear visible company identification and announce your arrival at the pickup
• Commercial drivers step out of the vehicle to open and close doors for passengers
• Nothing to eat or drink except water in a closed container, whether behind the wheel or helping a client
• No smoking with clients aboard, and no handheld phone while driving
• Accept no money or gifts from clients, give no advice or referrals beyond the ride itself, and never drum up extra business
• Never discourage a complaint or refuse to give contact information
• Report any doubt about your fitness to drive, and withdraw without fear of retaliation

A violation can cost a driver a suspension or termination. CiM’s vendor incident report asks whether the driver was sent for drug and alcohol testing after an accident, and a follow-up section records driver and vehicle status. Our incident report template follows a similar layout.

Rider rules and trip timing

CiM tells riders when to expect you, and those promises set your service standard.

• Pickup window. CiM tells riders to expect the vehicle anywhere from 15 minutes before to 15 minutes after the scheduled pickup. Riders on shared trips may be asked to be ready earlier. Our pickup window page explains how to schedule around one.
• Notice. Riders need to call no later than two business days before the appointment, and CiM takes requests as far as 30 days ahead. Urgent appointments are scheduled as available.
• Evenings and weekends. After hours, CiM’s transportation vendors can handle rides to urgent care for conditions that are not life-threatening and rides home after a hospital discharge. Riders call the CiM office for the after-hours contacts.
• After-hours eligibility. Current vendors can check a rider’s Medicaid eligibility on the Our Vendors page by entering the rider’s ProviderOne number.
• Out-of-area care. The rider’s local doctor must preauthorize it, and CiM recommends seven working days’ notice.

State rules add two points. If a ride to urgent care or home from a hospital comes up while CiM is closed and cannot approve it first, WAC 182-546-5200 lets a subcontracted provider carry the rider under CiM’s after-hours directions and seek retroactive authorization no later than two business days afterward. Otherwise the provider declines. HCA’s sample broker contract also denies payment when a rider reaches the appointment too late for the clinic to provide care, though the broker may consider paying if the delay was not the provider’s fault. Our guide to hospital discharge transportation covers the after-hours calls.

Trips across the Columbia River

Portland sits across the river from Vancouver. WAC 182-501-0175 names Portland, The Dalles, Hermiston, Hood River, Rainier, Milton-Freewater, and Astoria as recognized bordering cities in Oregon, where Apple Health care counts the same as care inside Washington. The CiM subcontractor profile asks which Oregon counties and cities you will serve, and its vendor forms include a City of Portland letter about out-of-area medical transportation.

That letter dates from 2012, and the rules have moved since. Portland City Code chapter 16.40 now has permit sections for NEMT companies, drivers, and vehicles, defining an NEMT company by reference to Oregon’s Medicaid rule (OAR 410-136-3000). Section 16.40.980.C, however, suspends the effective date of those NEMT requirements until the City Council adopts replacement provisions, while the Portland Bureau of Transportation still lists NEMT among the for-hire services that apply for city permits. Ask CiM and the bureau’s regulatory program what applies to your vehicles before you take on regular Portland runs. Our guide to out-of-state trips covers the wider rules.

Contacts

Keeping CiM trips billable

CiM’s pricing splits individual, shared, group, and after-hours pickups, so each monthly bill depends on accurate trip records. Run CiM trips on the HealthRide board, and the HealthRide driver app saves GPS-verified miles, timestamps, and signatures on every ride. Trip logs export as CSV or PDF, so you can check each CiM bill against what your drivers actually ran.