What is wheelchair van transportation?

A van with a ramp or a lift, and a driver trained to load and secure a wheelchair. The person stays in their own chair for the whole trip. Nobody has to be lifted into a car seat, and the chair does not have to fold or come apart.

This is non-emergency transportation. It is for a dialysis session, an oncology appointment, a cardiology follow-up, a discharge home from the hospital, a dental visit, or a family event. It is not for an emergency. If something is actually wrong, the answer is 911, not us.

How is this different from an ambulance?

An ambulance is a clinical vehicle with clinical staff and clinical pricing. It exists for people who need medical care during the trip: oxygen managed, vitals watched, a stretcher, treatment on the way.

A wheelchair van is transportation. The person is medically stable, can sit up in their own chair, and simply needs a vehicle that fits it. Families sometimes call an ambulance for a routine appointment because they do not know a third option exists between a private car and a stretcher. It does, and it costs a fraction of the ambulance.

The dividing line is simple. If the trip needs medical care, it needs an ambulance. If it only needs a ramp, it needs a van.

What does it cost in Brockton?

Our wheelchair transportation is $115 each way, or $230 round trip , within five miles. Beyond five miles it is $2 a mile .

That covers most of what Brockton families actually need. A trip from a home on the west side to Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital on Centre Street, or to Good Samaritan Medical Center on North Pearl, or to the VA campus on Belmont Street, is usually inside or close to that five mile radius, which means the base rate.

The trips that go over are the ones into Boston. Brockton to Boston Medical Center, Mass General, Brigham and Women's, Tufts, Beth Israel or Dana-Farber is roughly twenty to twenty five miles depending on where you start, so the mileage adds to the base. Call and give us the two addresses and we will quote the exact number before you book, rather than surprising you with it afterward.

The reason we publish the rate at all is that almost nobody in this business does, and a family trying to budget for three dialysis trips a week deserves to be able to do the arithmetic without making four phone calls.

Does insurance pay for it?

Original Medicare does not cover routine non-emergency rides to appointments. It covers ambulance transport when it is medically necessary, which is a different thing.

Some Medicare Advantage plans include a limited number of transportation trips a year as a supplemental benefit. If your parent is on an Advantage plan, it is worth calling the number on the back of the card and asking specifically whether non-emergency medical transportation is covered, how many trips, and whether you have to use a particular vendor.

MassHealth members can get rides to covered appointments through the PT-1 process, arranged by the medical provider. That is a real benefit and a good one, and if your family qualifies and can wait for it, use it. Two honest caveats: it has to be arranged in advance through the provider, and it will not help you with a trip that is not a covered medical appointment.

The Brockton Area Transit Authority also runs a paratransit service alongside its fixed routes, which is worth knowing about for regular local trips. Like every paratransit service it requires an eligibility application first, and rides are booked in advance within set hours.

Most people who call us are paying privately, usually because the appointment is Thursday and the eligibility process is measured in weeks.

What about the front steps?

This is the question that catches families out, and it catches them out at the worst moment, which is with the van already in the driveway.

The van solves the road. It does not solve the four concrete steps between the front door and the sidewalk, and Brockton has a great deal of older housing where those steps are exactly the problem. A triple decker with a flight up to the door, a two family with a porch and no ramp, a ranch with three steps and an iron railing.

We provide stair assistance at $200 a visit : two trained staff and a motorized stair chair, to get someone safely down the steps and back up afterward. It is a separate service from the ride, and it is arranged at the same time.

So when you call, tell us about the steps before you tell us about the appointment. Count them. Tell us whether there is a railing, how wide the doorway is, and roughly what the person weighs. Those four facts decide whether the trip works, and finding them out on the phone on Tuesday is a great deal better than finding them out on the doorstep on Thursday.

Will somebody stay with them?

This is the thing families usually have not thought about until the first time it goes wrong.

A ride drops someone at the door. If your father has memory trouble, or cannot hear the receptionist through the glass, or will not remember what the doctor said, being dropped at the door is not the same as getting to the appointment. He can end up in the wrong waiting room on the wrong floor with nobody to ask.

We also provide medical appointment escorts: somebody who goes in, sits in the waiting room, comes into the appointment if the patient wants that, takes notes, and reports back to the family afterward. If you work and cannot take the morning off, that is usually the part you actually need, more than the driving.

Booking a wheelchair ride in Brockton

Care Remedy has an office in Brockton at 555 Pleasant Street, Suite 1, alongside our offices in Woburn and Springfield. We run wheelchair-accessible vans across the region and complete around thirty thousand trips a year.

Have four things ready when you call:

• Pickup address and destination address
• Date, appointment time, and whether you need a return
• The chair: manual or power, and whether it folds
• Steps at the pickup door, and how many

Book online:https://www.careremedy.com/wheelchair-transportation

Call 781-957-8076 . You will get the price on that call, not a call back.

And if you are booking a course of treatment rather than a single appointment, say so. Recurring trips are easier for everybody to plan around than a scramble every week.