MEDICAID
Barnstable has not been audited. “If anybody else’s de- partment is like mine, a director is driving almost every day because of the driver shortage,” she said. “Transpor- tation in Massachusetts does not get reimbursed by the state, unless you’re a regional district and we are not, so every penny counts. We are forced to meet a lot of unfunded mandates.”
The Technology After identifying Medicaid eligible students, the key to
recouping the cost of transporting them to approved ac- tivities is keeping accurate records of their movements on the school bus and the people who care for them, including bus drivers, aides and monitors. Vendors such as SMART tag, Tyler Technologies and
Zonar said that while not all solutions are created equal, there are viable options to address student tracking that work. They are also aware that most school districts still use the paper trail to track students and many others are either unaware the Medicaid funds are available or do not have the resources or personnel to pursue the re- imbursements. However, they believe that when school districts finally see the full potential of this fairly new technology, more will get on board. “School districts say they like our system because it
makes it easier to track students,” said Brett Taylor, the product marketing manager for SMART tag. “Before the Georgetown ISD [in Texas] had our system, it took three staff members three days to compile the daily log of every route and which students rode on which days specifically for special ed routes and now they don’t have to do anything. We provide them with an administrative portal. Information is automatically downloaded on our administrative portal, and transportation forwards it to the special education department for their district and that information is submitted for Medicaid reimbursement.” Taylor said the system tracks when students with
Individual Education Programs (IEPs) are taken to school and home again. He said their system uses an RFID card. “Not every special ed student rides every day. You’ve
got to have a system to track those students by date, time, and location for a trip to qualify for reimburse- ment,” Taylor explained. “The data requirements have gotten more complicated over the years, so it’s import- ant to keep up with the current requirements for the report also.
48 School Transportation News • MARCH 2022 “We do the hard work,” Taylor continued. “We record
the date, time and place the student gets on the bus, the number of minutes on the bus, location, and time they get off the bus. We also record the name of the bus driv- er, the monitor or aide.” Taylor, whose company has 73 clients nationwide, said
a Colorado school district lost $1.4 million in reimburse- ments and a large district in Texas lost $4 million by not keeping good records. Chess at Tyler Technologies shared that Reynolds School District in Oregon utilized Versatrans to track Medicaid-eligible students but still needed to manually fill out the necessary forms. In retrospect, he said staff could have better utilized the software to pull ridership data and filter the eligible students, and student track- ing could have automated the process of filling out and submitting the forms. Zonar spokesman Ben Hohmann echoed similar capa-
bilities that he referred to as a child safety solution for an entire fleet. “It is not just for Medicaid reimbursement, it can even be used for tracking COVID contacts,” he said. Hohmann called the traditional Medicaid reimburse-
ment application a lengthy paper-based process that many school districts don’t bother with. “It is too time consuming, and they look at a cost
benefit and ask is it really worthwhile,” Hohmann said. “With our student tracking solution, the mere fact that the information is digitized so they can auto-populate the Medicaid reimbursement forms and just send them in. And usually, those funds offset the cost of our solu- tion. Your fleet is now safer because you can track who is getting on and off the bus and when. That extends to special needs students as well.”
Caveat Emptor Experts, transportation directors and vendors were unanimous in their advice to school districts consider- ing leaping into a technological solution—do not take a leap of faith but one of knowledge. “Become educated on what’s allowable and what the
process is for both your state and your region,” Robinson advised. “Be aware of existing and new technologies that can help; you may already be using that technolo- gy. Finally, take your state’s Medicaid online tutorial for claiming, and there are also tutorials online to under- stand the federal claiming process.” ●
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