About this episode
Dakota Wilkinson, co-owner of Skyline Transport in Florida, runs The NEMT Standard, a Facebook group of about 200 members she operates at no cost after Skyline won NEMT business of the year at the last NEMTAC conference. Vendors are vetted before admission: if she has not seen them at NEMTAC, they do not get in, and she says only two insurance providers currently earn her recommendation. She reads live posts from other groups, including a seller listing one wheelchair van and seven ambulatory vehicles on $11 broker trips.
Key takeaways
- The NEMT Standard runs about 200 members and costs nothing. Wilkinson and her business partner built it because the big groups recycled the same starter questions without depth.
- Vendor vetting is the gate. If a vendor is not at NEMTAC and Wilkinson has not seen or heard of them, they do not get into the group.
- Anyone can sell you a policy, but NEMT carries coverages a generalist will miss. Wilkinson says only two insurance providers currently earn her recommendation until others prove otherwise.
- MotiveCare contacted Skyline only after it won the conference award, then offered roughly $11 per trip with no volume guarantee. Skyline turned it down.
- A contractor bidding the Pinellas County transit authority on demand accessibility RFP published a heat map of where it needed providers, instead of making operators apply blind.
Chapters
- 0:02 Cold open, reading the comments live
- 0:30 Dakota Wilkinson, Skyline Transport, My Elite Courses
- 1:31 Why The NEMT Standard is free
- 2:40 How the group started and why it stayed small
- 3:36 Vetting vendors, no NEMTAC no entry
- 6:01 The insurance question that never stops
- 7:30 Spammy DMs, no website, no transparency
- 9:08 Teaching facilities what a will call return means
- 11:46 Live reading posts from the other groups
- 14:00 The broker myth and where to actually look
- 17:36 MTM, MotiveCare and $11 trips
- 19:24 How to apply to the group
