Senior affairs chair wants Hartford to hear about Veyo
Missed pickups, poor customer service have plagued company since January
The chairwoman of New London’s Senior Affairs Commission has been paying attention to the experiences that seniors have had with Veyo, the company that won a contract with the state last year to take over non-emergency medical transportation for the state’s Medicaid recipients.
And now, Karen Paul said Tuesday, is the time for people to tell legislators their stories.
Legislators and members of several legislative committees and working groups have been hearing complaints from Medicaid members since shortly after Veyo’s three-year contract started in January, including streams of anecdotes about missed pickups, poor customer service and rides that arrive hours late.
In June, the Medical Assistance Program Oversight Council convened a working group on non-emergency medical transportation — a benefit guaranteed to Connecticut’s Medicaid recipients — to bring the problems to light and brainstorm solutions. At its July meeting, members of the working group called into question the data Veyo has reported to the state Department of Social Services that it says shows its performance is improving.
The working group won’t meet again until September but
Paul said she wants New London seniors who have scheduled rides with Veyo to tell the group’s chairs how it went.
“I just constantly am hearing about all these people that didn’t get picked up,” Paul said.
Members of the Senior Center have access to rides to medical appointments through the center for free but Paul said that benefit has been limited since the beginning of July, when the city’s 2018-19 budget went into effect, reducing the number of drivers by one and the frequency of the rides from five to three days a week.
Paul said she recently learned about the working group, and realizing most medical transportation users on Medicaid may not have the means to travel to Hartford to testify at its meetings, now is urging them to send emails to its chairwoman in the hopes of adding to the deluge of anecdotal evidence.
She wrote a brief, all-caps summary of the request providing the email addresses of state Rep. Catherine Abercrombie, who chairs the working group, and the legislative clerk for the Medical Assistance Program Oversight Council, Richard Eighme, and urging people to contact them “if you have had any problems with this or any other non-emergency medical transportation system.”
Paul said she has posted the flyer at the Senior Center and plans to put copies up at various senior housing facilities in the city.
Abercrombie said Tuesday that any feedback from people using Veyo to schedule rides is valuable as the working group tries to determine whether the company’s performance is improving.
“I think it’s very useful,” she said. “I think it gives credibility to what’s really going on with Veyo.”