Infrastructure is the answer.
Two problems dominated the Medicaid transportation conversation this quarter, and they turned out to be the same problem.
The first is rural access. Federal and state investment in rural health is at a historic high, with the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program now moving from award to execution. But funding a service and delivering it are different things. When a member cannot get to the appointment the investment paid for, the dollars do not produce the outcome it was meant to buy.
The second is program integrity. Regulators at every level are tightening the standard for what health plans must be able to prove about the dollars they spend. Encounter data has to reconcile. Trips have to be verifiable. “We paid the broker” is no longer an answer that holds up.
Both problems share one root cause: transportation that operates outside the systems and stakeholders it is meant to serve. And both have the same answer. Infrastructure. A closed-loop system where every trip is scheduled, verified, claimed, and paid inside a single connected record, so that access can be measured and spend can be proven. This is what Kinetik has been building for nine years. Today, we’re introducing Kinetik as a tech-enabled services company that orchestrates the movement of people, data, and care across the healthcare ecosystem. The new brand reflects the scale of that work.
Unchanged purpose. Upgraded presence.
Here’s what we’ve been thinking about…
A new look for the work we do: Kinetik rebrands
On July 8, 2026, Kinetik launched a brand refresh. The campaign at the center of it asks one question we have been putting to the industry for weeks: Make It Make Sense. You can track a meal, a package, and a rideshare in real time, but a member waiting for a ride to dialysis often gets no visibility, no confirmation, just hope. None of that ever made sense. We are making it make sense.
The rebrand marks Kinetik’s evolution from a technology company that digitized the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) trip lifecycle into a tech-enabled services company that orchestrates the movement of people, data, and care across the healthcare ecosystem. Founded in 2017 in the back office of a Brooklyn transportation company, Kinetik began as billing and revenue cycle management for a single transportation company before evolving into a full closed-loop infrastructure. Nine years later, that infrastructure has processed more than 13 million trips and $1.1 billion in NEMT claims, serving more than 1.5 million members, with network coverage across 44 states through 20+ dispatch partners.
The mission has not changed. We are still focused on removing transportation as a barrier to care, on programs that are transparent and accountable, and on health plans empowered to own, share, or delegate a benefit they are responsible for. No black boxes. What changed is that how we show up now matches what we have built.
As part of the launch, three products were renamed effective July 8. Trip Scheduler is now Kinetik Atlas. Trip Assistant is now Kinetik Compass. RCM is now Kinetik Pulse.
Read → Unchanged purpose. Upgraded presence. Why Kinetik rebranded
The brand made its public debut during our July 8 webinar, “State of NEMT 2026: The Future of Healthcare Transportation,” moderated by Mohammad S. Hossain, Chief Business Officer of Kinetik. Panelists included Sufian Chowdhury, Co-Founder and CEO, Kinetik; Andrew Peterson, CEO, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of New Mexico; Ainsley MacLean, MD, FACR, CEO, carcompany.ai and CIO, Ainsley Capital; and Tonya Copeland, CGO, Liberty Health, for a candid conversation about where NEMT is headed and what modern program oversight requires.
Watch the replay → State of NEMT 2026: The Future of Healthcare Transportation
Rural access is an infrastructure problem
Rural communities lack the connective tissue that turns investment into kept appointments. That was the throughline across three pieces of work this quarter.
In May, Kinetik was named an official partner of the Microsoft Rural Health Transformation Collaborative, a multi-sector partnership uniting technology companies, health systems, payers, and nonprofits to help states deploy funding from the CMS Rural Health Transformation Program. Transportation is not an administrative afterthought in rural care. It is a clinical asset. When a member cannot reach a clinic that may be an hour or more away, preventive care does not happen, chronic disease goes unmanaged, and avoidable emergency visits follow.
We took that point of view further this quarter. In a panel discussion with Becker’s Payer Issues, Kinetik joined payer leaders to examine how forward-thinking plans are building transportation into the core of care delivery rather than treating it as a peripheral concern. And in MedCity News, Sufian Chowdhury warned that fragmentation in transportation infrastructure is a direct threat to the credibility of rural health investment: if patient arrival cannot be confirmed, outcomes cannot be measured, and no one can know whether a program is working.
Read → Kinetik joins the Microsoft Rural Health Transformation Collaborative
Read → Bridging the distance: How payers are addressing rural access gaps
Read → Healthcare access depends on infrastructure: Why rural communities can’t afford fragmentation
In the media
Business Wire — Contributions by Elizabeth Jepsen, Chief of Staff
Becker’s Payer Issues — Contributions by Mohammad Hossain, Chief Business Officer
MedCity News— Contributions by Sufian Chowdhury, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
State spotlight: Texas
Few states run a tighter Medicaid program than Texas. Its payment error rate sits at 1.31% against a 5.09% national average, and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) pairs strong oversight tools with an active enforcement posture. That discipline is exactly what makes the state’s transportation blind spot so conspicuous.
This year, the Governor’s Office directed HHSC to conduct a targeted policy review of NEMT, confirmed publicly at the April 8, 2026 Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing. The review was on track for completion by June 2026, and findings had not been released publicly as of this issue. When they land, encounter data quality is likely to be among the first areas scrutinized.
The structural issue is worth understanding. Texas Medicaid is almost entirely managed care, with more than 93% of beneficiaries enrolled in Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) and NEMT carved directly into MCO contracts. The encounter data submission obligation sits with the plan. Yet in most broker-managed programs, it is the broker’s systems that generate those encounter records, reconstructed after the trip from benefit management, dispatch, and billing platforms that were never designed to connect. When HHSC questions the data, the plan has to go back to a subcontractor and rebuild records from systems it cannot see. Responsibility and information run in opposite directions.
The exposure is already documented. A recent Texas OIG audit found that one of the state’s NEMT brokers failed five documentation and billing standards, generating more than $515,000 in improper payments from a single health plan in a single year. The failure categories, including missing prior authorizations, inaccurate billing, unauthorized cost overrides, and unresolved member complaints, map directly to the disconnects that come from assembling encounter data after the fact. One program, one plan, one fiscal year. Every Texas MCO should be asking what a similar review of its own program would surface.
Texas is simply where the pattern is most visible right now. Any health plan relying on legacy broker infrastructure to produce the data it is contractually accountable for will eventually face the same test. Texas plans may face it first. They will not be the last.
Read → Your NEMT broker owns the data. You own the risk.
Policy watch
CMS managed care payment analysis requirement now in effect. Under the 2024 Medicaid and CHIP Managed Care Access, Finance, and Quality final rule, the payment analysis data fields added to the Network Adequacy and Access Assurances Report apply to all rating periods beginning on or after July 9, 2026, a milestone that has now arrived. States will use the data to scrutinize whether managed care payments are adequate and whether networks hold up. For health plans, it is one more area where self-reported, reconstructed data will not survive contact with a regulator, and where verified source data is the only durable answer. Source: Medicaid.gov, Medicaid and CHIP managed care reporting
Rural Health Transformation Program moves from award to execution. On December 29, 2025, CMS announced that all 50 states received first-year awards from the $50 billion program, averaging $200 million per state and ranging from $147 million to $281 million. Texas received the largest award in the country: HHSC’s “Rural Texas Strong” program totals $281.3 million in budget period 1. Through 2026, states are standing up governance, selecting grantees, and turning proposals into operational workplans, and CMS has signaled that continued funding depends on states following through on the commitments in their approved plans. Transportation is a natural fit for these dollars where states build it in as measurable infrastructure rather than a logistics afterthought. Sources: CMS press release, December 29, 2025 | Texas HHSC, Rural Health Transformation Program
CMS escalates program integrity with the CRUSH initiative. On February 25, 2026, CMS announced its Comprehensive Regulations to Uncover Suspicious Healthcare (CRUSH) initiative, along with a request for information and enforcement actions including a $259.5 million deferral of quarterly federal Medicaid matching funds to Minnesota. CMS said $243.8 million was flagged as unsupported or potentially fraudulent claims and warned it could defer more than $1 billion if the state fails to remediate. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described the shift as moving from a “pay and chase” approach to a “detect and deploy” strategy using AI to flag suspicious payments before they go out, and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “CMS is done trying to catch fraudsters with their hands in the cookie jar, instead, we’re padlocking the jar and letting them starve.” Since then, CMS has continued applying that posture nationally: on July 21, 2026, HHS announced it was deferring approximately $867.5 million in federal Medicaid payments to California and $199 million to Minnesota pending review of high-risk claims. That is precisely the model closed-loop infrastructure was built to support: verify the trip before the dollar leaves the program. Source: CMS press release, February 25, 2026 | HHS press release, July 21, 2026.
HHS-OIG turns attention to NEMT and state fraud units. HHS-OIG has an active work-plan project, announced October 15, 2025, using targeted reviews to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA) in Medicaid NEMT, citing significant vulnerabilities identified in past state and federal oversight efforts. Separately, HHS-OIG’s government-wide review of state Medicaid Fraud Control Units is already producing consequences: Hawaii’s unit had its federal recertification denied effective June 4, 2026 and New York’s unit, one of the largest in the country, had its federal funding suspended effective July 1, 2026, after HHS-OIG found a sustained pattern of low criminal case outcomes. The federal message to states is consistent: the accountability chain runs from the data all the way to a plan’s financial standing. Sources: HHS-OIG Work Plan: Targeted Reviews of Medicaid NEMT | HHS-OIG Work Plan | Hawaii HHS-OIG Official Denial Letter | New York HHS-OIG Official Letter
Medicaid financing and eligibility changes raise the stakes. The 2025 reconciliation law, which CMS refers to as the Working Families Tax Cut legislation (Public Law 119-21), is now in implementation, with six-month eligibility redeterminations and community engagement (work) requirements phasing in through 2027. As enrollment churns and budgets tighten, every avoidable dollar of transportation waste is a dollar not spent on care. Source: Public Law 119-21, Congress.gov | CRS Report R48633, Health Provisions in P.L. 119-21
The common thread: accountability pressure is converging from federal rulemaking, federal enforcement, and state directives at the same time. Health plans that can trace every trip and every claim to verified source data will absorb that pressure. Those relying on legacy broker models will feel it.
NEMT insights: From the blog
The NEMT integrity gap health plans can’t afford to ignore. NEMT spending is growing across every Medicaid market, but the infrastructure to verify what is being paid for has not kept pace. This piece breaks down where the verification gap opens and how to measure your program’s exposure.
Kinetik earned HITRUST r2 certification, the industry’s most rigorous information protection assurance, validating that its platforms meet the highest standards for security, risk management, and compliance.
Kinetik launched the Kinetik Health App, putting members in direct control of requesting, managing, and tracking their rides to care, with real-time driver tracking, caregiver access, and self-service scheduling for single or recurring trips.
Summer product update
This summer’s release, the first to ship under Kinetik’s new product names (Atlas, Compass, Pulse), is built around one goal: keeping your operation precise and in control, from post-trip corrections to the messages your members receive.
Correction requests: Handle post-trip changes from your transportation providers directly in Atlas. Review exactly what changed, approve in full, in part, or not at all, trip details and pricing update automatically on approval.
Smarter pickup times: Set a custom buffer for each Level of Service so estimated pickup times reflect the real time each trip requires, keeping Atlas aligned with your providers and accurate for members.
More flexible rate cards: A redesigned rate card builder now handles even the most complex transportation provider contracts, including time-based and route-specific rates and automatic no-show and cancellation fees, so every trip is priced exactly as it should be.
More meaningful member notifications: Members now receive richer, better-timed updates across their entire trip, tailored to each ride type and including their provider’s contact details once assigned. Caregivers and additional contacts can get the same updates by SMS or email, reducing status calls to your team.
Edit an entire itinerary in one place: Change every leg of an itinerary from one unified view, making updates faster and simpler to manage.
Learn more → Summer Product Updates | Request a Demo
In summary
This quarter told one story from three directions. The rebrand reflects what Kinetik has become: a tech-enabled services company that orchestrates the movement of people, data, and care. The rural access work shows why that matters, because investment without infrastructure does not reach the member. And the accountability thread, from Texas to CMS, shows the standard the whole industry is moving toward, where every trip must be verifiable and every dollar attributable.
Infrastructure is the answer to both the rural access gap and the program integrity gap, because both come down to whether the systems connecting members, providers, health plans, and transportation were built to work together. Kinetik was built for exactly that.
Unchanged purpose. Upgraded presence.
