How Large PACE Fleets Achieve Compliance, Efficiency, and Audit Readiness

Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) transportation is more than just moving people from one location to another. It’s about preserving independence, dignity, and trust.

Since its inception in the 1970s, PACE has catered to individuals aged 55 or older who require nursing home-level care due to chronic illnesses. For non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers, meeting these expectations on a daily basis can be complex.

As your fleet grows, missed pickups, privacy concerns, and compliance management tasks threaten to strain smooth partnerships with PACE centers. Large providers realize that spreadsheets and disconnected legacy systems can’t sustain compliance at scale.

That’s why automation, data transparency, and participant-focused workflows can make the difference. By blending technology with empathy, providers are improving reliability, reducing administrative strain, and strengthening long-term PACE partnerships.

Minimizing No-Shows & Boosting On-Time Performance

For PACE fleets, reliability is non-negotiable.

A missed pickup could mean losing out on an essential service or a lost day of critical care. That’s why leading NEMT providers are investing in automation that tracks every ride. Recurring ride templates enable dispatchers to pre-load trips on a weekly or monthly basis for participants with consistent care routines.

Suppose you provide a regular ride to an elderly patient for their dialysis three times a month. In that case, recurring ride templates help you schedule these trips in your system, reducing the need for manual entries and minimizing scheduling conflicts or data errors.

Once trips are scheduled, automated confirmations and reminders take over. Participants or caregivers receive text, voice, or portal notifications confirming pickup times, along with easy options to cancel or reschedule.

A participant portal allows participants to view upcoming trips, driver ETA, confirm or cancel, and feel more engaged in the service.

A streamlined operational flow looks like:

Template → Confirm → Dispatch → Report

• Template: Pre-load recurring trips
• Confirm: Automated reminders/participant portal confirmation
• Dispatch: Vehicle assigned, route optimized, driver notified
• Report: Trip status captured, data fed into dashboards for oversight

Together, these automation layers help drive higher on-time performance and stronger participant satisfaction, while reducing the administrative burden of manual scheduling and follow-up.

Balancing Compliance and Dignity

In PACE compliance, one of the biggest challenges for NEMT providers is maintaining full regulatory compliance while ensuring the comfort and dignity of participants.

One critical best practice is the separation of Protected Health Information (PHI) from routing and operational data. By storing PHI securely within an electronic health record (EHR) or dedicated compliance system and sharing only trip-relevant fields with scheduling or routing tools, providers minimize data exposure risks.

In practice, this means utilizing secure dispatch platforms that mask sensitive medical fields, encrypting trip data in transit, and implementing separate access controls for medical and operational staff.

Beyond systems, training and consent are equally critical.

Every driver and dispatcher should complete HIPAA and sensitivity training tailored to senior and mobility-assisted riders. Participants should know how their data is used and given a choice in communication channels, whether they prefer phone calls, text reminders, or portal updates.

Respectful alerts with clear, neutral messaging, such as “Your ride will arrive in five minutes,” uphold privacy while ensuring reliability. When compliance and dignity are built into every interaction, transportation teams strengthen the bond between participants, drivers, and PACE centers.

Achieving Continuous Audit Readiness

When PACE transportation providers operate under intense accountability standards, like maintaining accurate trip logs that are verifiable and auditable, modern automation is necessary.

Automatic trip reports and secure analytics dashboards give compliance teams instant visibility into every ride. From request to completion, everything is on one dashboard, without the need for manual compilation. When all data flows through a centralized, privacy-compliant platform, audit readiness becomes a continuous state.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) emphasizes that Medicaid transportation programs must maintain clear, verifiable records of service delivery to support program integrity and prevent improper payments.

Tobi integrates capabilities such as maintaining trip histories, ride completion verification, and reporting, providing PACE providers with a single, secure environment for scheduling, dispatching, and reporting.

PACE Fleets Success In Action

What could this look like for your operation?

There are multiple advantages:

• A sharp drop in missed trips
• Fewer last-minute dispatch changes
• More trips without hiring more employees
• Greater reliability and participant trust
  
  

Growth in the PACE industry isn’t just about scale. It’s about consistency. Automation enables teams to focus less on chasing daily exceptions and more on enhancing the participant experience. Secure dashboards reduce compliance headaches. Rider portals give participants and caregivers control and peace of mind.

Tobi was built to help NEMT and PACE fleets operate at that level of trust and transparency. From automated scheduling to compliance-ready reporting, we help you maintain audit-ready operations and participant-focused daily practices.

Building Trust Through Automation and Transparency

Reliability in PACE transportation is built on trust

Participants trust that their rides will arrive as promised. PACE centers trust that providers will deliver care with consistency and respect. And providers trust that their systems will keep them compliant, audit-ready, and participant-focused.

Automation and transparent reporting make that trust possible.

They remove the guesswork from daily operations, give participants confidence in their schedules, and help teams stay ahead of compliance demands without added administrative strain.

So, ask yourself: Is your PACE program operating at the level of reliability and respect your participants deserve?

Tobi will help get you there. Book a demo today and discover how we collaborate with you to enhance your PACE fleets operations.