The Maine Legislature’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee held a meeting Tuesday afternoon to discuss the state’s relationship with ModivCare, a large Colorado-based company that recently filed for bankruptcy.
While ModivCare currently has a contract to provide non-emergency medical transportation to MaineCare patients in certain areas, the State of Maine has been attempting for the past two years to award them full responsibility for all sixteen counties.
As of now, Maine-based organizations Penquis and Waldo Community Action Partners provide non-emergency medical transportation in a handful of areas, but this would change if the new contract with ModivCare is ultimately allowed to take effect.
After filing unsuccessful administrative appeals, Penquis filed a lawsuit against the state alleging that the process of awarding the now financially-compromised ModivCare such an expansive award over in-state providers was unfair, convoluted, and inconsistent.
According to Penquis, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) scorers admitted being unable to explain why points were deducted from their scores, frequently copied and pasted evaluations across regions, gave disparate ratings to identical question responses, and failed to review key parts of the proposals.
In late August, ModivCare announced that it would be filing for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy after facing significant financial difficulties and facing delistment from the New York Stock Exchange.
During Tuesday’s meeting, held outside of the Legislature’s typical session dates, lawmakers questioned representatives of Maine’s Office of MaineCare Services (OMS) and ModivCare about their partnership, the quality of service being provided to Mainers in need, and what can be expected during the bankruptcy process.
Members of the HHS Committee sought answers to a number of questions pertaining both the ModivCare’s current financial state, as well as the quality of care being provided to Maine patients.
Michelle Probert, Director of OMS, emphasized in her remarks that ModivCare has met all of the Department’s performance benchmarks and has continued to do so despite their bankruptcy filing.
One of the committee members, however, suggested that not all patient complaints are necessarily being registered through official channels and getting incorporated into these statistics, as she said many people who have approached representatives with problems seem like they do not want to become involved in a formal dispute due to their dependence on ModivCare’s services.
Roger Bondeson, also part of OMS leadership, later urged lawmakers to share constituents’ concerns with them because “we can’t fix what we don’t know.”
He went on to also note that of Maine’s three non-emergency medical transportation providers, ModivCare has the lowest complaint rate despite having the highest raw number of complaints registered against it, explaining that this is a result of the high volume of patients the company serves.
When pressed by lawmakers about ModivCare’s bankruptcy and its potential consequences, Probert explained that the Department has “contingency plans in place” should they encounter any problems.
Although it was not immediately clear what such contingency plans would entail, Probert later explained that the Department would likely not need to restart the entire request-for-proposal (RFP) process should things ultimately fall through with ModivCare.
“But at the moment we have not seen a change in service, we have not seen a change in complaints, we have not seen a change in payments,” she said, reassuring committee members that the bankruptcy filing has not yet impacted the company’s provision of services in the state.
ModivCare CEO Heath Sampson also appeared in Augusta Tuesday to address lawmakers’ concerns over the company’s ability to fulfill its obligations to the state during this period of apparent financial uncertainty.
In speaking to the Committee, Sampson expressed confidence that the ModivCare would emerge from the bankruptcy process successfully in the coming months, echoing prior reporting from Business Wire that the company is expected to exit the restructuring process later this year.
He also attributed much of the company’s current financial struggles to costly acquisitions made before his time as CEO, which started in 2023.
“The only way I am going to be able to build back the trust, if given the opportunity, is with transparent data,” Sampson said. “I look forward to that and proving it. And when there are mistakes, making sure that those mistakes are communicated and heard.”
