NEMT rider satisfaction survey: ten questions and how to use the answers

Who to ask, and when

Survey riders within two or three days of the ride, while they still remember it. Ask facilities once a quarter, since the same case managers and front desks see many of your trips.

• Pick trips on a fixed rule. Every fourth completed trip, or every trip on two set days a week. A fixed rule keeps you from choosing only the riders you expect to be happy.
• Cover the whole operation. Over a quarter, every driver, both ends of the day, and every level of service should show up: ambulatory, wheelchair, stretcher, will-call returns, and discharges.
• Keep the bad days in. Do not skip trips that ran late or ended in a complaint. They are the trips the survey exists to hear about.
• Keep drivers out of it. Drivers should not hand out or collect surveys, because a rider asked in front of the driver may not answer freely.
• Use the channel each rider can answer. A text link for riders who agreed to texts, a phone call for riders without a smartphone, and a paper form with a stamped return envelope for riders who prefer paper.
• Expect a low response. Oregon’s Ride to Care program heard from between 6% and 14% of members in its yearly survey from 2021 to 2024. Send enough invitations to get a usable number of answers.

The rider survey

Use the same wording every month so results can be compared. Each question covers one thing, so a low score points to one fix. Questions 4 to 8 use one scale: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. Read the questions to five or six riders before the first full month and reword anything they stumble over.

End with two lines that are not scored: “May we call you about your answers? Yes / No, and the best number,” and “Who filled out this survey? The rider / A family member / A caregiver.”

Questions 2 and 6 echo two statements the Ride to Care evaluation tracks each year: that the pickup window lets members arrive on time, not too early or too late (86% in 2024), and that members feel safe with their drivers (96% in 2024). Those figures come from one Oregon program and are not a benchmark for yours, but they show the questions are worth asking.

The facility survey

Send it to the case managers, nurses, and front desks who book or receive your riders.

Our guide to facility account management covers how to act on what facilities tell you.

Making the survey accessible

A survey only some riders can answer gives you only some riders’ views.

• By phone. Some riders have low vision, no smartphone, or trouble with written forms. Read the questions exactly as written and mark the answers.
• Large print on paper. Keep one question per line, with plenty of space for the answer.
• In the rider’s language. The Section 1557 rule (45 CFR 92.201) applies to health programs that receive federal financial assistance, directly or indirectly. It calls for free language help, and a qualified human translator has to review machine translation when accuracy matters.
• Auxiliary aids. The same rule (45 CFR 92.202) requires free auxiliary aids and services for people with disabilities, so offer the survey through a relay service or another format on request.
• Plain words. Say “the driver was late,” not “on-time performance.” Keep the whole survey under three minutes.

See our guide to language access in NEMT for interpreter and translation options.

Turning answers into action

1. Review monthly, in one meeting. Put the share of agree and strongly agree answers for each question on one page, next to last month’s.
2. Check answers against trip records. If riders say pickups run late, pull your on-time numbers for the same trips. Our guide to on-time performance explains how to measure it.
3. Judge drivers over a quarter. A handful of answers can swing on one bad morning. Look for patterns across months before coaching anyone.
4. Log complaints the same day. Any answer that describes a problem goes into the complaint log, and broker trips follow the broker’s grievance rules.
5. Call back the riders who asked. A call within a few days tells riders the survey was read.
6. Fix one thing at a time. Pick the weakest question, make one change, and watch that number for the next two months.
7. Share results with drivers. Read out the good comments by name and the problems without names.

Broker scorecards reward the same things. MTM Health’s standards for Virginia fee-for-service trips from October 1, 2026, for example, call for on-time performance above 95% and substantiated complaints below 0.1% of completed trips. Our guide to NEMT quality assurance shows how surveys fit into a wider QA program.

Rules to follow

• Complaints inside surveys. Under 42 CFR 438.400, a grievance is any expression of dissatisfaction other than about a benefit decision. CareOregon also bars providers from retaliating against anyone who files one.
• Gifts. Nothing that could steer a Medicare or Medicaid rider to your company. The HHS Inspector General treats non-cash items up to $15 each and $75 a year per person as nominal.
• Texts. Text only riders who agreed, and honor a STOP reply (47 CFR 64.1200). Our guide to text message rules covers consent in detail.
• Privacy. HIPAA counts quality assessment and improvement as health care operations (45 CFR 164.501), and a covered provider may use health information for its own operations. Keep survey answers tied to trip IDs and limit who can read them.

Checking survey answers in HealthRide

HealthRide’s reports show whether you ran on time, with mileage from recorded routes and hours from real clock-ins, so a rider’s comment about a late pickup can be checked against the trip. Riders and facilities also get a text with a link that shows when the driver will get there, so they can check without calling. See the reports page for what each report covers.