The following is a guest article by Jill Hericks is the Head of Strategic Accounts at Kinetik
Across healthcare, interoperable technology infrastructure has become foundational. Recent industry research underscores just how critical this shift has become: according to a global survey of healthcare leaders conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights, 96% of executives say they are ready and resourced to adopt digital solutions, yet more than 90% acknowledge that interoperability remains a significant challenge to realizing their full value. This contrast highlights a growing consensus across the industry—strategy and investment alone are not enough if systems remain disconnected.
Payers and public programs increasingly recognize that siloed technology limits visibility and slows decision-making. As a result, interoperability—the ability for systems and stakeholders to securely share and act on data—has become foundational to improving outcomes, controlling costs and delivering better outcomes.
Yet, one critical benefit has largely been left behind in this interoperability transformation: non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT).
For more than two decades, the NEMT industry has operated within a highly fragmented market. Program administrators, brokers, and service providers often rely on disconnected systems, manual processes, and delayed communication. While many programs are now considered “digital,” they remain operationally disconnected. As a result, NEMT programs are frequently overseen reactively rather than managed proactively, limiting the ability to make agile, data-driven decisions and contributing to inefficiencies, increased risk of fraud, waste, and abuse, and declining member trust.
As Medicaid programs modernize, payers assume greater accountability for outcomes and costs, and regulators demand stronger program integrity, NEMT’s lack of closed-loop interoperability has become a material operational and financial risk – not just an efficiency issue. Today, interoperability must become the standard by which NEMT programs are designed, procured, and managed.
The Real Cost of Reactive Oversight
Missed and late trips, along with broader issues related to trip fulfillment, remain among the most visible failures in NEMT programs. But these aren’t isolated operational hiccups; they’re symptoms of a system designed to respond after something goes wrong – rather than prevent failure in the first place.
In many NEMT programs, data is captured by individual stakeholders but not shared through interoperable infrastructure. Trip intake lives in one system. Fulfillment happens in another. Billing and claims live somewhere else entirely. Information arrives late, requires manual reconciliation, or can’t be trusted as a single source of truth. By the time a program administrator learns the ride was missed or delayed, the appointment is already lost.
This reactive model increases administrative work, inflates costs, and erodes member trust. Over time, it conditions organizations to accept failure as inevitable because the system offers no way to intervene early enough to change the outcome.
Digital Solutions Don’t Equal Connected Infrastructure
As Medicaid leaders and payers evaluate NEMT partners, it is increasingly important to distinguish between digital solutions and interoperable technology stacks.
Many vendors describe their offerings as “end-to-end,” yet in practice, critical components such as billing and claims may remain disconnected from trip operations. In these models, data exists across multiple systems but does not flow automatically across the full benefit lifecycle. This fragmentation limits the ability to act on data in real time, increases reliance on manual workflows, creates additional administrative overhead, and opens the door to fraud, waste, abuse, and human error.
Interoperability is what unlocks the full strategic value of the NEMT benefit. Truly interoperable technology stacks support closed-loop data sharing across program administrators, brokers, transportation networks, members, and financial workflows. With closed-loop data sharing, stakeholders can make agile, data-driven decisions and have proactive oversight. This shared infrastructure allows programs to focus on continuous improvement and accountability, which rely on capabilities that digital tools alone cannot provide.
What Interoperability Means in NEMT
In NEMT, interoperability is the ability for every stakeholder involved in a trip to operate from the same, trusted data, at the same time. It means trip status updates are visible as they happen. Exceptions surface immediately. Billing and claims are generated directly from the verified trip activity. Operational and financial data remain synchronized throughout the benefit’s lifecycle.
This level of transparency is now expected in nearly every other service that touches consumers’ daily lives. We can track a food delivery in real time from pickup to delivery. Yet for members relying on NEMT to access healthcare services, that same visibility has historically been absent. This gap underscores how far behind the benefit has fallen, and how critical closed-loop interoperability is to enabling timely, data-driven intervention.
Why Interoperability Changes Outcomes
When NEMT programs are built on closed-loop, interoperable infrastructure, oversight shifts from reactive to proactive. Program administrators can see trips unfolding in real time, identifying risk as it emerges, and intervening before a delay becomes a missed appointment. Decisions are informed by real-time, trusted data rather than after-the-fact reports.
Closed-loop interoperability also strengthens program integrity. When billing and claims are directly connected to trip data, programs reduce manual reconciliation, limit opportunities for fraud, waste, and abuse, and automate workflows that would otherwise require significant administrative effort. Most importantly, members experience more reliable, predictable service, which helps rebuild trust in a benefit that is essential for care access.
What Payers Should Look for in Closed-Loop Interoperability
As payers evaluate NEMT partners, a few questions can help distinguish digital tools from truly interoperable, closed-loop infrastructure:
- Does trip data automatically flow across intake, fulfillment, billing, and claims without manual reconciliation?
- Is there real-time visibility into trip status and exceptions to support timely, data-driven decisions?
- Are operational and financial data connected to a single, trusted source of truth?
- How does the platform reduce reliance on human intervention for oversight and issue resolution?
- Can the infrastructure proactively identify risks before trips are missed, late, or unfulfilled?
These questions shift the focus from features to foundations—where long-term program performance is determined.
Interoperability as a Procurement Imperative
As healthcare continues to modernize, NEMT cannot remain an exception. Interoperability must be treated as foundational infrastructure, not a differentiator or add-on. To identify partners capable of delivering programs that unlock the full strategic value of the NEMT benefit, procurement processes must look beyond surface-level digital features and assess whether solutions support closed-loop data sharing that enables proactive oversight and agile, data-driven decision-making.
The right infrastructure enables program integrity improvement, lower administrative overhead, and better member experiences. Without closed-loop interoperability, NEMT programs will continue to rely on fragmented workflows and reactive management, which limits their ability to evolve alongside the rest of healthcare.
NEMT is a critical access point to care. Interoperable, closed-loop technology is not simply an upgrade; it is essential to ensuring the benefit can meet the expectations of today’s healthcare system and the members who depend on it.
A Perspective from Inside the Industry
I entered the NEMT space as a newcomer to healthcare, bringing a background in hospitality and a strong focus on customer experience. That perspective drove me to immerse myself in the NEMT ecosystem and learn from stakeholders across the industry to understand where and why the benefit was breaking down.
What became clear was that many of the challenges facing NEMT were not the result of a lack of effort or intent, but of disconnected infrastructure that limited visibility, coordination, and the ability to make timely, data-driven decisions. Motivated to help solve these challenges, I worked at a brokerage and ultimately joined a healthcare technology company focused on building closed-loop, interoperable infrastructure to connect the full NEMT ecosystem. The goal was simple: enable earlier issue detection, better collaboration, and a solution that benefits everyone involved.
About Jill Hericks
Jill Hericks is the Head of Strategic Accounts at Kinetik, where she leads with a mission to modernize healthcare access and make it more dependable. After a long career in hospitality, she joined the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) industry in 2020, bringing her expertise in service excellence to healthcare technology. Jill is passionate about helping partners implement solutions that address the root causes of systemic challenges – advancing a more connected, reliable system that communities can trust.
Kinetik is a tech-enabled services company that empowers health plans to own, share, or delegate NEMT program operations – without sacrificing transparency, control, or accountability.
Kinetik is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.
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