Transportation Partners for Hospitals, Skilled Nursing and Dialysis Facilities

A three-hour lead time

This is the commitment, and it’s the one that matters most to the people reading this page.

Give dispatch three hours and we will be at your door. Not “we’ll try.” Not “depending on availability.” Three hours from the call to the vehicle, for any level of service including stretcher.

We publish that because lead time is the constraint a discharge planner is actually managing. The question is never how quickly someone answers the phone — it’s how late you can call and still get this patient home today. If the floor clears a patient at two in the afternoon, a three-hour commitment means they leave today rather than holding a bed overnight.

Two things make it work. Our cancellation window for facility accounts is two hours, deliberately shorter than the booking commitment, so a booking made at three hours’ notice is never inside its own cancellation window. And dispatch is staffed overnight, so a 6am discharge is booked at 3am by a person rather than a voicemail.

Who we work with

Hospitals and health systems — discharge transport home or on to a skilled nursing or rehabilitation facility, and scheduled arrivals for appointments and outpatient procedures. We run to every Inova campus, UVA Health Prince William and Haymarket, Sentara Northern Virginia, VHC Health, StoneSprings, Reston, Mary Washington and Stafford, and across the river to Georgetown, GW, Sibley and Howard.

Skilled nursing and rehabilitation facilities — the recurring appointment volume that makes up most of a SNF’s transport need, plus admissions and discharges. Many of our longest-standing accounts are SNFs where the same residents ride the same schedules for years.

Dialysis centers — the highest-frequency relationship in this business. A patient on a three-day schedule takes more than 150 trips a year. We run standing orders to DaVita, Fresenius, US Renal Care, Legacy and Pure Life centers across the region.

Assisted living and memory care communities — appointment transport, group scheduling, and crews who understand that a rider with dementia needs a different approach at the door than a rider without.

Group homes and community services boards — recurring program and appointment transport.

Surgery and imaging centers — post-sedation discharge, where a rideshare is not an acceptable answer and most centers’ own discharge instructions say so.

What an account gets you

No quote per trip. Contracted rates, agreed once. Your scheduler books and the trip runs.

A dispatch line that knows you. Facility bookings don’t go through the general queue.

Standing orders. Recurring schedules are set up once — days, times, destination — and stay on our board. The same crews tend to see the same riders, which matters more than it sounds like it should. Dialysis patients in particular do better with drivers who know how long the chair takes and whether this rider needs the vehicle warm before they get in.

Consolidated billing. One invoice rather than per-trip reconciliation.

Every level of service from one vendor. Ambulatory, wheelchair, stretcher and bariatric over 300 pounds, so a patient whose needs change doesn’t mean a new vendor relationship.

Payers and authorization

Medicaid trips reach us through the broker. If a patient is a Medicaid member, the trip has to be authorized by their transportation broker — in Virginia the brokers we work with are MTM Health and SafeRide Health. H&M Transport is not a Medicaid provider in Maryland, and in DC the only Medicaid plan we serve is UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of the District of Columbia, through SafeRide Health. Once authorized it may well be assigned to us, but a trip your scheduler books directly with us is a private-pay trip even when the patient is a Medicaid member. If a discharge is time-critical and the authorization is not in place, call dispatch and say so — we would rather tell you straight away which route actually gets the patient home today.

Medicare Advantage. Some plans carry a limited transportation benefit administered by a broker such as MTM Health or SafeRide Health. Where a patient has one, book through the broker and request H&M Transport by name.

Facility accounts and self-pay. Account trips run on contracted rates agreed once, invoiced to the account rather than collected from the patient. Original Medicare does not cover wheelchair, ambulatory or stretcher van transportation, and private health insurance rarely does — for a self-pay discharge the published rate card is what applies.

What we need from you at booking

The trips that go wrong almost always go wrong because of something that could have been said in fifteen seconds on the phone.

Level of service. Can the patient sit upright safely for the journey, or not? That single question decides the vehicle. A patient booked as wheelchair who turns out to need a stretcher means the trip doesn’t happen that day.

Weight, if it’s near or above 300 pounds. Bariatric equipment is rated and our bariatric fleet is smaller. More notice helps.

Stairs at the destination. The most commonly missed item. A patient who managed their front steps two weeks ago may not manage them today. Steps mean a stair chair and two crew.

Oxygen or equipment traveling with the patient. Changes vehicle prep and securement.

A realistic time rather than an optimistic one. If the paperwork usually takes ninety minutes, book from when it will actually be done. We would rather hold a slot than have a vehicle idle at your loading dock.

Who to call at your end if the crew arrives and the patient isn’t ready.

Accreditation and compliance

H&M Transport was the first non-emergency medical transportation provider in Virginia to earn NEMTAC accreditation. The standard covers driver training and screening, vehicle inspection and maintenance, wheelchair securement procedure, incident reporting and passenger handling.

We hold WMATC authority 3449, which covers the Washington Metropolitan District — the District of Columbia, the Northern Virginia jurisdictions, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland. A patient going from a Virginia facility to a DC hospital travels on one booking with one carrier, legally.

Drivers are trained on passenger assistance and securement, not just driving. Every stretcher trip runs with two crew members, so there is a second pair of hands for the transfer at both ends.

What we can’t take

H&M Transport runs non-emergency medical transportation. We carry people to scheduled medical care and back home again, and the ride itself is transport rather than treatment.

That means there are trips we can’t take. We are not an ambulance service. We don’t provide medical care or monitoring on board, we don’t transport anyone to an emergency room, and we don’t move patients from one hospital to another for a higher level of care. Those are ambulance trips, and they need a crew and a vehicle equipped for them.

If this is a medical emergency, call 911.

If you’re not sure which you need, call us and describe the situation. We would rather tell you to dial 911 than send the wrong vehicle.

Set up an account

Call (703) 304-7889 and ask for facility scheduling. We’ll talk through your volume, the levels of service you need and the destinations you use most, and quote contracted rates from there.

If you’d rather see numbers first, our published rate card is the private-pay baseline; facility contract rates are agreed separately.