- #Scott endangered safety forcing his drivers drivers#
- #Scott endangered safety forcing his drivers driver#
- #Scott endangered safety forcing his drivers series#
“We’re talking about the most vulnerable population in the state,” Bayles said.
#Scott endangered safety forcing his drivers drivers#
He has to pick her up to place her in and out of the car, and secure her heavy motorized wheelchair to the back of his vehicle.īayles trusts the local company to take care of Caitlin, but is concerned for other families in the community that rely on the independent drivers dispatched by Veyo. If that van is already booked or out of commission, Bayles, a disabled veteran, must transport Caitlin himself - a task that causes him severe back pain. The rural area has only one transportation service, and that service has only one van with a wheelchair lift. Any changes takes 48 hours, even if the change is the result of Veyo’s mistake - a scenario that Bayles said played out in late December, when Veyo’s computer system automatically kicked Caitlin off the schedule because of a glitch. Though the transportation service is locally owned and has worked with Caitlin in the past, Bayles has to go through Veyo to schedule rides. His frustrations with Veyo began almost right away. Priest River resident James Bayles said his 28-year-old daughter, Caitlin, has cerebral palsy, and relies on a local transportation company to give her rides from her care center to medical appointments. Some involve Veyo and its services, while others are aimed at the local commercial providers. The complaints, which Idaho Reports obtained via public records request, started that day. That contract went into effect July 1, 2016. Last year, Veyo won a $71 million contract to provide transportation for medical appointments, beating out AMR, the previous NEMT contractor. Veyo works with commercial transportation providers, like Freedom Shuttle, as well as hundreds of independent drivers in an Uber-like model. The broker of those transportation services: Veyo, the California-based company that provides non-emergency transportation services (NEMT) for Idaho Medicaid patients. Some Medicaid patients are entitled to transportation to doctor visits, therapy sessions, and other medical appointments.
An Idaho Reports investigation revealed issues including tardiness, poor customer service, inadequate safety measures, alleged sexual assault, and life-endangering mistakes - but issues with the transportation services started well before last year. The incident, confirmed via an Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office report, is one of almost 400 lodged over Idaho’s non-emergency medical transportation services in the last six months. The incident “resulted in stress and trauma for everyone involved in the incident,” and forced the client, who has a compromised immune system, to spend two hours standing outside in the cold.
#Scott endangered safety forcing his drivers driver#
“Most likely the driver let him out of the vehicle and drove away,” says a complaint filed with the state.
That’s unlikely There were people home at the time who didn’t see him. The driver, an employee of a Meridian-based transportation company, claims he walked the young man to the back door of the house.
The young man, a Medicaid client, is non-verbal. No one knows what happened in the two hours between when the driver left and when the teenager’s mother found him near a busy street. On a cold night in November, a state contracted service “could have led to the death of a special needs child,” according to documents obtained by Idaho Reports.Īfter a medical appointment, a driver with a transportation company for Medicaid clients dropped off a teenager with special needs at the wrong Owyhee County home.
#Scott endangered safety forcing his drivers series#
Note: This is part one of a series exploring non-emergency medical transport services for Medicaid patients in Idaho.
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