Does Medicare Cover Non-Emergency Medical Transportation?

The honest answer, in plain terms

People call us every week believing Medicare will pay for a ride to their cardiologist. We would rather disappoint you on a web page than at your front door, so here it is straight: Original Medicare does not pay for a ride to a routine appointment in a car or a wheelchair van. Part B pays for ambulance transport — which can include scheduled, repeating non-emergency trips when Medicare's medical-necessity, physician-certification and documentation rules are met — only when other transportation would endanger your health. Whether that applies to you is decided by Medicare and your doctor, not by a transportation company.

This is not a Heart2Heart policy. It is how the Medicare benefit is written. Any transportation company that tells you Medicare will cover a routine appointment ride is either mistaken or selling you something.

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

Medicare Advantage is a different story — sometimes

Medicare Advantage plans (Part C) are run by private insurers and many of them add a supplemental transportation benefit that Original Medicare does not have. Typically that looks like a fixed number of one-way trips per year to plan-approved medical destinations, arranged through the plan's own transportation vendor rather than a provider you choose.

If you have an Advantage plan, look for 'transportation' in your Evidence of Coverage, or call the member services number on the back of your card and ask two specific questions: how many trips do I get, and do I have to use your vendor? The answer to the second question is usually yes, and that is often why people end up calling us instead — plan vendors work on their own schedule, not yours.

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. Rides booked and paid for directly on this website are paid by card at booking.

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. We cannot obtain authorization after the fact, and we will not run a trip as 'insurance' and then send you a surprise bill when the claim is denied.

Everything else — doctor appointments, hospital discharges, senior transportation, wheelchair and stretcher trips of any kind — is private pay. That includes trips that feel medically necessary to you and to your doctor. Medical necessity and insurance coverage are two different tests, and only the second one determines who pays.

• 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. Rides booked and paid for directly on this website are paid by card at booking.
• Accepted for dialysis billing: commercial insurance, Medicare, qualifying Medicare Advantage
• Private pay: every other trip type on our public booking site
• Never accepted: Medicaid, under any circumstances

Heart2Heart does not accept Medicaid

We do not accept Georgia Medicaid for any trip, and there is no exception process. If you are a Medicaid member, your plan's non-emergency medical transportation broker arranges and pays for your rides, and you should start there. We have written a separate page explaining that clearly so nobody wastes an afternoon on the phone.

What private pay gets you instead

Private pay has a real upside that plan-arranged transportation usually does not: you pick the time, you get a straight answer about pricing before you book, and you are not waiting on a broker's queue to be assigned a vehicle. Our riders book a specific pickup window and get door-through-door assistance, a comfort package, and one companion riding free as standard.

And private pay does not have to mean paying all at once. Private-pay trips are paid by card; call dispatch at (678) 696-1583 with payment questions. For recurring appointments, our membership plans bundle covered rides at a lower effective cost than booking individually.