Who Pays for Transportation to Dialysis in Georgia?

Original Medicare (Part A and Part B)

Original Medicare does not cover routine transportation to dialysis in a car, a wheelchair van, or any other non-ambulance vehicle. Part B can cover ambulance transport to the nearest facility that can provide dialysis when other transportation would endanger the patient's health.

That is not limited to emergencies. Medicare's own guidance describes scheduled, repeating non-emergency ambulance trips as payable when the medical-necessity, physician-certification and documentation rules for repetitive transports are met. Whether any individual patient meets that standard is decided by Medicare and the treating physician — we do not make coverage or eligibility judgments.

Families are often surprised by any of this because Medicare pays for the dialysis itself. It does. Getting to the chair is treated separately. Heart2Heart bills insurance for medically necessary transports such as dialysis, wound care and emergency-department related trips. Coverage depends on the patient's plan and is never guaranteed, and we do not bill Medicaid.

Official sources: Medicare.gov — dialysis services & supplies · CMS — ambulance services compliance guidance

Medicare Advantage (Part C)

Some Medicare Advantage plans add a supplemental transportation benefit — often a fixed number of one-way trips per year, sometimes restricted to plan-approved destinations and arranged through the plan's own transportation vendor. The number of trips is usually far short of the roughly 156 round trips a year that three-times-a-week dialysis requires.

Check your plan's Evidence of Coverage or call the number on the back of the card and ask two specific things: how many one-way trips per year, and whether the plan will authorize an outside provider. Heart2Heart bills insurance for medically necessary transports such as dialysis, wound care and emergency-department related trips. Coverage depends on the patient's plan and is never guaranteed, and we do not bill Medicaid.

Georgia Medicaid

Georgia Medicaid does cover non-emergency medical transportation for eligible members, arranged through the state's NEMT broker rather than booked directly with a provider. Georgia's Department of Community Health lists Verida as the statewide broker as of April 1, 2026; the state page below is the current source for how to arrange a ride. Heart2Heart is not part of that network and does not accept Medicaid under any circumstances. If you are a Medicaid member, your rides are arranged by calling your region's broker, and that is genuinely the right path for you — we would rather say so plainly than take a call that ends in a bill you cannot pay.

If you have lost Medicaid coverage or were found ineligible, the dialysis transportation without Medicaid page covers your options in detail.

Official sources: Georgia Medicaid — non-emergency medical transportation

Commercial insurance

Commercial plans vary widely, but dialysis is the one trip type where non-emergency transportation is sometimes a covered benefit, particularly for members with end-stage renal disease. Heart2Heart bills insurance for medically necessary transports such as dialysis, wound care and emergency-department related trips. Coverage depends on the patient's plan and is never guaranteed, and we do not bill Medicaid.

Private pay

If none of the above applies, dialysis transportation is private pay at our published rates — a base rate for the vehicle type plus per-mile charges. Because dialysis means three round trips a week, this is where membership plans do the most work: they bundle a set number of covered rides per month at a lower per-ride cost. Private-pay trips are paid by card; call dispatch at (678) 696-1583 with payment questions.