Medical transportation RFP template for hospitals, health systems, and senior communities

How to use this template

Fill in the blanks, delete what does not apply, and have purchasing or legal counsel read it before it goes out. The request works for a hospital, a health system, a nursing home group, a dialysis chain, or a senior community that wants one or more companies to carry its patients or residents.

• Use it when the rides are a real contract. For a few rides a month, ask two or three companies for a rate sheet and use the questions in how to choose a medical transportation company.
• It comes before the agreement. The winning proposal turns into the signed terms in the facility transportation agreement. Write this request so the two documents use the same words for the same things.
• Your buyer type sets some rules. A public hospital buys under public-sector purchasing rules, and a buyer spending federal award money follows 2 CFR 200. The section on rules below sorts out which parts apply to you.
• Companies answering a request like this will find the matching document in the facility proposal template.

The request

1. About this request

1.1 ____ (“we”) is looking for one or more companies to provide non-emergency rides for our patients or residents at ____ (locations).

1.2 We expect about ____ one-way rides a month. This is an estimate, not a promise. We may buy more or fewer rides, and we may award to more than one company.

1.3 Send every question in writing to ____ (name and email) by the date in part 2. We answer all questions for all companies at the same time. Please do not contact other staff about this request.

2. Dates

3. Who may respond

A company must meet every item below to be scored. We mark each one pass or fail.

1. It holds every license and permit our state requires for the vehicles it will use.
2. It carries the insurance in part 7 and sends a certificate from its insurance agent.
3. Neither the company, its owners, nor any driver is on the OIG exclusion list, the federal SAM.gov exclusions, or our state’s Medicaid exclusion list if the state keeps one. The company signs a statement saying so and checks every month.
4. It gives ____ references (at least three) from facilities with similar volume, with a contact name and phone for each.
5. It has run non-emergency rides for at least ____ years, or explains how its staff came by the experience. (Leave this out if you do not need it. Unneeded qualifications cut the number of bids.)

4. The rides we need

• How rides are booked. ____ % scheduled the day before or earlier, ____ % same-day, ____ % discharge or return trips with no set time.
• Busiest days and hours. ____
• Where rides start and end. ____ (campuses, units, clinics, and the distance range).
• Companies may bid on any levels. A company with only wheelchair vans can respond for those rides. Say which levels you are bidding.

5. Response times and standards

Our target for on-time rides is ____ % each month. Please state the number you can meet and how you record it.

6. Vehicles, drivers, and proof

• Vehicles. List each vehicle by year, make, type, lift or ramp, wheelchair positions, securement system, and last state inspection date. Wheelchair vehicles must meet the federal lift and securement specifications in 49 CFR 38.23. We may inspect or ride along before award.
• Securing wheelchairs. Describe how drivers secure any wheelchair a rider brings, including chairs not made for transport.
• Drivers. For each driver on our account, give the date of the background check and driving record check, the training courses with dates, and the date of the last exclusion check. Send one sample driver file with personal details removed.
• Dispatch. Name who answers our calls from ____ to ____ and after hours, and how a dispatcher reaches us.
• Subcontracting. State whether any ride goes to another company, and which.

7. Insurance

Send the certificate with the proposal. Coverage stays in force through the contract and for ____ days after it ends.

8. Privacy

The company uses patient information only to arrange, provide, and bill for our rides. State whether you will sign our business associate agreement (attached ☐ yes ☐ no). Explain how ride details reach drivers and whether drivers ever use personal text messages. Tell us within ____ days of any use or disclosure that was not allowed.

9. Reporting and meetings

The company sends a monthly report with rides by level of service, on-time pickups and arrivals and the definition used, will-call and discharge waits, rides that did not run and why, complaints, and incidents, using trip numbers in place of names. We meet every ____ months to review it. See the monthly facility report template.

10. Pricing sheet

Fill in every line. Prices include all costs unless a line says otherwise, and they stay firm for ____ days after the due date and through the first contract year.

Show how you measure miles. Our rate sheet template has the wording.

11. How proposals will be scored

We read the pass or fail items in part 3 first. Companies that pass are scored on these criteria. The points are examples to replace with your own.

Each reviewer rates each criterion from 0 to 5: 0 for no answer, 1 for an answer that does not meet the requirement, 3 for meeting it, and 5 for exceeding it with proof. Points earned equal the rating divided by 5, times the points available.

Price scoring. We run every company’s sheet against the same sample month: ____ wheelchair legs of ____ loaded miles, ____ stretcher legs of ____ miles, ____ waits of ____ minutes, and ____ late cancellations. The lowest total earns the full price points. Every other company earns the lowest total divided by its own total, times the price points. Example with made-up totals: $6,000, $6,600, and $7,500 earn 20, 18.2, and 16 of 20 points.

12. Terms

• We may award to more than one company and do not promise any number of rides.
• The contract runs ____ with ____ renewals. Either side may end it on ____ days’ written notice.
• We pay each invoice within ____ days. Invoices show one line per one-way trip.
• A company may not hand rides to another company without our written approval.
• If a company cannot meet a requirement, it marks that requirement “no” and explains on a separate page. A change to our terms inside the proposal is treated as a “no.”
• ☐ Proposals may become public records after award. Mark anything confidential.
• We pay no costs of preparing a proposal.

13. What to send

☐ Signed cover page ☐ Part 3 answers ☐ Parts 4 to 9 with a yes or no on every requirement ☐ Vehicle list ☐ Sample driver file ☐ Insurance certificate ☐ Pricing sheet ☐ References ☐ Signed privacy terms, if required

What a real hospital request sets for response times

A request that names numbers gets proposals you can compare. Two current documents show how specific a buyer can be.

• University Hospital’s 2026 RFP (Newark, New Jersey). Confirm every request within 15 minutes. Reach the patient’s bedside within 15 minutes of the set time on scheduled rides, within two hours on same-day requests, and within one hour on urgent ones. Report an incident within 15 minutes and to the hospital’s risk office in writing within five calendar days. Deliver a driver’s training and competency file within 12 hours of a request. Screen staff against exclusion lists every month.
• MTM Health’s Virginia Medicaid handbook (2026). The first pickup of a scheduled trip falls in a window from 15 minutes before to 15 minutes after the set time. A will-call return must arrive within 45 minutes of the notice that the rider is ready. A hospital discharge must arrive within three hours of the notice, and missing that standard results in liquidated damages.

The same hospital RFP also tells bidders the volume they would carry: about 375 basic ambulance rides, 9 specialty care rides, and 145 wheelchair or livery rides a month. It splits rides into scheduled, same-day, and broker-booked rides, and it says same-day requests are the biggest group. That is the table in part 4, filled in. A company that knows the shape of your month can price it. A company that does not will add a cushion.

Rules that shape the request

Federal award money. A recipient or subrecipient of a federal award that buys rides must follow the procurement standards in 2 CFR 200.318 to 200.327 (200.317). A state or tribe follows its own procedures plus a few of those sections. Quotes from an adequate number of qualified sources are enough below the simplified acquisition threshold, which is $350,000 under the FAR since October 1, 2025, and a recipient may set a lower one. Above it, 200.320(b)(2) requires public notice, a list of every evaluation factor and its relative importance, written evaluation procedures, and an award to the responsible offeror whose proposal is most advantageous considering price and other factors. That is why part 11 prints its points. Section 200.319(c) lists unreasonable qualification requirements and unnecessary experience among the things that restrict competition, and 200.318(c)(1) bars staff who select contractors from soliciting or accepting gratuities, apart from unsolicited items of nominal value where the recipient’s own standards allow them.

Public hospitals. A public hospital buys under public-sector purchasing rules, so ask its purchasing office which apply. University Hospital’s request, from an instrumentality of the State of New Jersey, asks for a sealed package, state business registration, ownership disclosure, and several state certifications, and it treats a material exception to its specifications as grounds for rejection.

Excluded companies. OIG says an excluded party can receive no payment from federal health care programs for what it furnishes, and that hiring someone on the list can bring civil monetary penalties (OIG exclusions). A contract that a federal award recipient awards, expected to reach $25,000 or more, is a covered transaction, and the buyer must verify the contractor is not excluded by checking SAM.gov, collecting a certification, or adding a clause (2 CFR 180.220 and 180.300). Part 3 asks for a signed statement and the monthly check.

Free rides for your own patients. If your facility offers established patients free or discounted rides, the safe harbor in 42 CFR 1001.952(bb) sets conditions. One bears on the pricing sheet: drivers and others arranging the ride may not be paid per beneficiary transported. OIG’s 2016 commentary says a facility that hires a private company could pay on the total distance a vehicle travels. The anti-kickback guide lists the other conditions.

Privacy terms. Under the Privacy Rule, a covered entity may share protected health information when another provider needs it to treat the patient (45 CFR 164.506(c)(2)), and a provider that receives information about a patient’s treatment is outside the business associate definition (45 CFR 160.103). Whether a ride company fits that exception depends on the arrangement. Decide with your privacy officer, then say so in part 8. The business associate agreement template has the contract terms.

Wheelchair securement. Part 6 asks for the federal vehicle specifications. For vehicles up to 30,000 pounds gross weight, 49 CFR 38.23(d) calls for a securement system built to restrain up to 2,500 pounds per securement leg or clamp and at least 5,000 pounds for each mobility aid, and one that limits an occupied chair to 2 inches of movement in any direction. WC18 covers tiedowns and occupant restraint systems, and WC19 covers wheelchairs built to be used as seats in a vehicle (RESNA). Do not make a WC19 chair a condition of the ride. Federal ADA transportation rules bar a covered entity from denying a ride because a wheelchair cannot be secured satisfactorily by the vehicle’s securement system (49 CFR 37.165(d)). Our guide to wheelchair securement standards explains the parts.

Mistakes that cost you good proposals

• Two standards that disagree. University Hospital’s request gives a two-hour same-day window in its on-time section and a one-hour pickup in its patient pickup section. Companies would ask which applies. Check every number against every other before the request goes out.
• No volume. Without monthly rides by level, companies guess and pad their prices.
• One price for everything. An ambulance, a wheelchair van, and a stretcher van cost different amounts to run. Let companies bid on the levels they offer, as University Hospital did.
• A cap that sits below cost. If you set prices at the Medicaid rate, the best companies may decline. Add the cost of your hardest rides, such as early dialysis chairs, to the sample month.
• Asking only for the lowest price. An RFP that scores service as well as price lets you pick the company that will actually show up.

For how to judge the answers once they arrive, see how to choose a medical transportation company. For the contract that follows, see the facility transportation agreement.

Checking the answers in HealthRide

A transportation company that runs on HealthRide can answer part 9 from its own records. Each trip keeps its scheduled and actual times and its GPS-recorded miles, on-time performance is tracked across every trip, and the trip log downloads as a spreadsheet or a PDF ready to print. The company’s facility customers also get a portal where staff request rides, track vehicles live, and view and pay invoices. See reports.