How to Terminate a NEMT Broker Contract in 2027 Without Losing Money

Ending a broker agreement is mostly a money question. The trips you already accepted, the claims still sitting in the portal, and the records the broker can audit for years all outlast the contract. Plan the exit around them and you keep what you earned.

Read these parts of your agreement first

Every broker writes its own agreement, and the terms that decide what leaving costs are spread across it. Find these before you tell anyone you are leaving:

• Term and renewal. When the agreement ends on its own, and how it renews.
• Termination. How much notice you owe, and what counts as cause.
• Notice. How notice must be delivered, and to whom.
• Payment and claims. Your filing deadline, offsets, and what happens to unpaid claims.
• Records, confidentiality, and the business associate agreement. What you must keep, and which duties survive the end of the contract.

Two public agreements show how far apart these terms can be. Yours may be a different version, so check your own copy.

Term	MTM Health standard agreement (January 1, 2023 version posted by Pennsylvania)	WellTrans Indiana agreement (revised October 16, 2025)
Length	Three years. Renews only by written agreement of both sides.	One year. Renews itself each year unless either side gives notice 45 days before the year ends.
Ending without cause	30 days’ written notice from either side	60 days’ written notice from either side
Ending for breach	Either side may end it at once if the other breaches	30 days’ written notice, after written notice of the breach and 10 days to fix it
Trips during notice	You must run every assigned trip, or risk liquidated damages and the cost of rescheduling	Handing back more than a daily average of 15 percent of trips counts as not giving notice
Leaving without proper notice	No separate rule, but trips you do not run bring liquidated damages and rescheduling costs	You forfeit everything WellTrans owes you
Unpaid claims	Held until MTM audits your records and claims, less any penalties it offsets	Paid twice a month within 30 days of a proper invoice, less overpayments
Claim deadline	90 days after the date of service, unless MTM’s client sets another limit	Due within 60 days, refused after 90
Records	10 years, and MTM keeps any records it collects	The full term plus 10 years, with copies due within 3 days of a request

The rest of this guide takes each of these in the order you will face them.

How much notice to give, and how to send it

Count the notice period from delivery

The notice period starts when the notice counts as delivered, not when you write it. MTM’s agreement treats registered or certified mail as delivered on the third mail delivery day after mailing, and a courier on the day it delivers or is refused. WellTrans’s counts an overnight courier as delivered the next day and certified mail on the third day after mailing. In a week with no postal holiday, a certified letter you mail to MTM on a Monday counts as given that Thursday, so the 30 days start then.

Email is not one of the delivery methods either agreement lists. Send the notice by a listed method to the address in the notice section, and email a copy to your provider relations contact. MTM’s 2023 agreement addresses notices to its chief executive at its office in Lake St. Louis, Missouri. WellTrans’s go to its compliance department in Indianapolis.

Pick an end date that works

• Add mail days to the notice period before you promise anyone a date.
• Check the renewal date. WellTrans’s agreement renews each year unless notice arrives 45 days before the year ends. Missing that date does not trap you, because 60 days’ notice ends it at any time.
• Check for a recent assignment. If WellTrans has assigned its agreement to a successor or to its client, such as the state, you may not cancel it for 181 days after the assignment.
• Line up other work first. A second broker, facility contracts, or private pay riders cover the gap. See working with more than one broker and how much revenue should come from one broker.

What to put in the notice letter

1. Your legal company name, federal tax ID, and the provider number the broker uses for you.
2. A plain sentence ending the agreement, with the section you rely on, such as “termination for convenience under section 14.A.”
3. Your last day of service.
4. A request that the broker stop assigning trips dated after that day and confirm the end date in writing.
5. The name, phone, and email of the person who will handle final claims and audit requests.
6. Your signature as an owner or officer.

Keep the mailing receipt, the delivery confirmation, and a copy of the letter together.

If you are leaving over a rate cut

Answer the rate change first. MTM’s agreement lets it amend the agreement, rates included, by written notice, and the change binds you unless you reject it in writing within 30 days of the notice’s date. WellTrans’s lets either side use its termination rights if it will not accept a change required by the state or plan that hired WellTrans. Send the written rejection inside the window even if you also plan to leave. Otherwise the new rate counts as accepted and can apply to the trips you run during notice. See how to negotiate broker rates.

Keep running trips until your last day

Giving notice does not end your duties. MTM’s agreement requires you to run every trip assigned to you during the 30-day notice period. If you do not, MTM may charge liquidated damages and deduct from what it owes you the cost of rescheduling those trips with another provider. WellTrans’s treats handing back more than a daily average of 15 percent of your trips after notice as leaving without notice.

Hand back trips the normal way, inside the normal deadlines:

Broker	Handback rule
MTM Health, Virginia (May 2026)	At least 24 hours before pickup
MTM Health, Rhode Island (July 2026)	At least 24 hours before the appointment. Never for same-day trips or trips taken from the marketplace.
WellTrans, Indiana (October 2025)	At least 12 hours before pickup for trips sent 36 hours or more ahead. A late one costs the difference between your rate and the replacement trip, or $100 if no one covers it.
WellTrans, Indiana (October 2025)	Tell WellTrans before you stop carrying a specific rider. Telling it less than 24 hours before a pickup costs the same, up to $2,000 a month.

Keep the rest of the contract working to the end:

• Insurance. MTM’s agreement ends at once if your insurance lapses, and WellTrans may end its agreement at once without the required coverage. Keep every policy and endorsement in force through your last trip. When a van leaves a scheduled auto policy, tell MTM right away, as its agreement requires.
• Drivers and vans. MTM may refuse to pay for trips run with drivers or vehicles that are not fully credentialed. Renew anything that expires before your end date.
• Standing orders. In Virginia, recurring trips set up with your company are assigned to you automatically. Ask the broker to move them to another provider by your end date. See broker trip offers and turnbacks.
• Marketplace. Stop accepting trips dated after your last day.

Handing off your riders

Your riders belong to the broker’s program, not to you. MTM’s agreement says it may assign or reassign any trip, recurring trips included, and that you have no right to carry any particular person or anyone going to a particular facility. A clean handoff is one where the broker moves every rider before your last day and no one misses a ride.

• Give the broker what the next provider needs. A few weeks before your end date, send a list of your standing orders by trip ID, with the days, times, and level of service. Add what the next driver should know, such as a rider who needs help to the door.
• Let the broker tell riders. In Rhode Island, drivers may not try to win more business from members, or contact them for anything other than the assigned trip. If a rider asks, give them the broker’s member line.
• Keep rider information private after you leave. MTM’s confidentiality section covers all information about its members, and it survives the end of the agreement.
• Never bill a rider. MTM’s agreement bars billing a member for a trip you ran under it, even if MTM or its client never pays you.

Work you won on your own, such as facility contracts, is not part of the broker agreement. MTM’s agreement says each side is free to contract with others for the same services. See NEMT facility contracts.

Getting paid for your last trips

Ending the agreement does not cancel what the broker owes you. MTM’s agreement says termination has no effect on the rights and obligations from services performed before it. But the last payments come slower and smaller than usual, so plan for them.

Bill every trip before its deadline

Deadlines keep running after you leave, and they differ by broker and by state:

Program	Claim deadline	Denied claims
MTM Health standard agreement (January 2023)	90 days after the date of service, unless MTM’s client sets another limit	Appeal through MTM’s process
MTM Health, Virginia (May 2026)	6 months after the date of service	Appeal within 365 calendar days
MTM Health, Rhode Island (July 2026)	90 days after the date of service	Appeal within 90 days of the denial to be safe. One section of the handbook allows 365 calendar days, and its portal guide says 90.
WellTrans, Indiana (October 2025)	Due within 60 days, refused after 90	Resubmit with the missing information

Submit each trip as soon as it is complete, not in one batch at the end. Download every remittance and claim report while you still have portal access. See timely filing limits.

Expect holds and offsets

• MTM holds unpaid claims. Payment for claims unpaid when you give notice waits until MTM has audited your service records and claims. It may subtract liquidated damages and other assessments, and recover amounts it paid in error.
• WellTrans checks attendance. It confirms that riders reached their appointments. If you do not answer its written request within 30 days, the trip counts as not having happened. When it owes you nothing more, you repay within 30 days of its written demand. WellTrans gives at least 10 days’ written notice before it imposes liquidated damages, so you can contest them.
• Some broker contracts want your records first. The sample broker contract that Washington’s Health Care Authority posts (amended through June 30, 2025) requires a departing provider’s trip logs, invoices, and driver documents to go back to the broker before final payment. If the provider does not comply within 30 calendar days of the request, payment for trips in the final month goes back to the state. The broker may skip the handover when the provider also works with another Washington broker, as long as it keeps the provider’s contact details for audits.

Plan your cash as if the last month of broker pay arrives late and short. See NEMT cash flow and tracking accounts receivable.

Records to keep after you leave

Audits can reach back years after an agreement ends. Keep your own copies of everything, because MTM’s agreement says records it collects will not be returned.

Rule	How long
MTM Health standard agreement	10 years, or longer if the law or MTM’s client requires
WellTrans, Indiana	The full term plus 10 years. Copies within 3 days of a request, and nothing under audit may be destroyed.
CareOregon NEMT manual (February 2024)	At least 6 years after the service, including grievances, accidents, and incidents
Federal managed care rule, 42 CFR 438.230	When a health plan hands its rides to a broker, the state, CMS, and HHS OIG can audit the broker’s records and its contractors’ records, such as yours, for 10 years after the contract period ends or an audit closes, whichever is later

Keep trip logs and signatures, claims and remittances, driver and vehicle files, incident reports, complaints, and every letter to and from the broker. Where you are also enrolled with your state Medicaid program, your provider agreement with the state requires you to keep the records that show the extent of the services you gave (42 CFR 431.107). The record retention guide lists periods by record type.

Rider data and your business associate agreement

Broker agreements come with a business associate agreement covering rider health information. Federal rules require those agreements to say that at termination, you return or destroy the protected health information you still hold, if that is feasible. If it is not, the protections extend to it, and you may use it only for the reasons it could not be returned (45 CFR 164.504(e)(2)(ii)(J)). WellTrans’s version asks you to certify to WellTrans that you destroyed it.

Trip logs you must keep for 10 years cannot be destroyed, so they stay under the agreement’s protections: locked away and used only for claims and audits. Rider lists, manifests, and phone numbers you no longer need should go back to the broker or be destroyed. Ask the broker in writing which it wants, and keep its answer. See business associate agreements and HIPAA for NEMT.

When the broker ends the agreement instead

Brokers can often end an agreement faster than you can. MTM’s agreement lets it end yours at once for any of seven reasons, including a breach, a safety concern, your bankruptcy, its client asking for your removal, the loss of its own contract, or other good cause. WellTrans may end its agreement at once for falsified trip logs or invoices, kickbacks, threats, missing insurance, or when its client directs it.

What you can do depends on the contract and the state:

• Georgia. You have 15 calendar days from the written termination notice to ask the broker, the Department of Community Health, or both to review it. Miss the window and you waive the right (DCH NEMT policies, July 1, 2026).
• WellTrans in Indiana. Disputes go first to a meeting of senior managers from both sides, then to binding arbitration by the Family and Social Services Administration, free of charge.
• Rhode Island. MTM may not sign an agreement with a provider previously terminated for noncompliance with program requirements, and it may not refuse to negotiate with a provider it suspended over a contract dispute when renewal comes (state contract effective July 1, 2025).

That is one more reason to leave on proper notice: a clean voluntary exit keeps the door open if you want to come back.

A broker ending your agreement is not the same as Medicaid ending your enrollment. But a Medicaid termination follows you everywhere. Every state must deny or end the enrollment of a provider that Medicare or another state’s Medicaid program terminated (42 CFR 455.416(c)). MTM’s and WellTrans’s agreements both ask you to promise you were never terminated from a Medicaid or Medicare program.

When your broker loses its contract

Sometimes the agreement ends because the broker’s own contract does. MTM can end yours at once if its client contract ends. WellTrans’s Indiana agreement passes to the state or its agent if WellTrans defaults or loses its contract, with the same terms and rates until they are renegotiated. Health plans switch too: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas moves its Medicaid members from Modivcare to MTM Health on October 1, 2026, and recurring trips after that date go to MTM Health.

In a switch, sign with the new broker early and bill the old one fast. The broker transition checklist covers it step by step.

Your exit checklist, step by step

1. Read the paperwork. Pull the agreement, every amendment, the business associate agreement, and the current provider manual. Mark the notice, claims, records, and confidentiality terms.
2. Line up other work. Sign or grow other contracts before your end date, so your drivers keep working.
3. Answer any rate change in writing within its window, usually 30 days under MTM’s agreement.
4. Send the notice by a delivery method the agreement lists. Keep proof of delivery, and ask the broker to confirm your end date in writing.
5. Hand off standing orders with a list by trip ID, and tell the broker before you stop carrying any specific rider.
6. Run every assigned trip through the end date, and keep handbacks inside the broker’s limits.
7. Keep insurance and credentials current until your last trip.
8. Bill each trip as soon as it is complete, and track every unpaid trip by trip ID and date of service.
9. Save copies of trip logs, claims, remittances, driver files, and every broker letter.
10. Settle rider data. Ask the broker what to return or destroy, and certify destruction where the agreement requires it, as WellTrans’s does.
11. Tell your drivers and dispatcher the last day and what replaces the broker’s trips.
12. Watch the mail for years. Answer every audit, attendance check, and overpayment demand in writing before its deadline. See NEMT broker audits.