Buckeye Health Plan Transportation: SafeRide Trips, Ride Types, and How Your Company Joins

Buckeye Health Plan’s Ohio Medicaid rides have run through SafeRide Health since July 1, 2024. Every Ohio plan must cover wheelchair van and ambulance rides at any distance and car rides to care 30 or more miles away, and county job and family services offices arrange many of the other trips; the Ohio guide explains both. Buckeye’s rides also come with a written SafeRide guide for clinics that decides which rider gets which vehicle.

Who books Buckeye rides

The ride line is SafeRide’s Buckeye program number, 1-866-531-0615, with TTY at 1-855-823-8587 in Buckeye’s 2026 provider manual. SafeRide’s Buckeye guide, version 7, says the call center is open Monday to Saturday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern, and books urgent treatment and hospital discharge rides 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Members can also start with Buckeye Member Services at 1-866-246-4358, and SafeRide’s MySafeRide app lets them book, track, and manage rides. Clinics can book in SafeRide’s Care Portal.

How much notice a ride needs, as of September 2026:

Ride	Notice
Routine rideshare or NEMT ride	48 business hours, under the SafeRide guide
Any ride, in the 2026 member handbook	At least 48 hours, or two business days
Urgent appointment	A direct pickup without the 48-hour wait, once verified with the doctor
Non-emergency ambulance	Booked with Buckeye itself, at least 24 hours ahead, with prior authorization

To book, a clinic gives SafeRide the member’s name, ID, date of birth, height and weight, appointment date and time, pickup and drop-off addresses, any extra passengers, a preferred provider, and the medically necessary ride type. Buckeye’s provider manual adds that the member must say at booking whether a return ride is needed. If a clinic you already serve could name your company as its preferred provider, ask your SafeRide network vendor manager how that field is used.

Which Buckeye rider gets which vehicle

The SafeRide guide sorts every rider into a ride type. That sorting decides which Buckeye trips reach an NEMT company at all:

The rider	What SafeRide books
Walks to and from the vehicle without help	Rideshare or public transit, except for OhioRISE members
Walks with a walker, cane, or other device and needs help	Ambulatory NEMT
Relies on a wheelchair and stays in it for the ride	Wheelchair van
Uses a wheelchair with a base wider than 34 inches	XL wheelchair van

For every wheelchair ride, the booking should state the combined weight of the rider and chair, whether the chair is manual or electric, the number of steps at the pickup, and the chair’s width. Check those details against your lift’s rated weight and your door and ramp widths before a driver leaves. If you run vans that take wide or heavy chairs, say so when you apply, since XL rides need them. See wheelchair accessible vehicles and bariatric transportation.

The SafeRide guide keeps rideshare for riders who walk unaided and bars it for Buckeye members who are also enrolled in OhioRISE, Ohio’s program for children with complex behavioral health needs. For how the two kinds of trips differ, see NEMT vs rideshare.

Families, children, and OhioRISE

Buckeye’s 2026 provider manual says the ride vendor carries the parents or legal guardians of a minor member when they come along, and may allow siblings. Extra riders must be named at booking, and the request may not always be granted. For OhioRISE members, Buckeye must arrange rides for family members, caregivers, and siblings in the home when the trip supports the child’s treatment, even when the child is not riding. See behavioral health transportation.

Two child rules reach your drivers. Buckeye’s member handbook makes the member bring a car seat for any child aged 4 or younger or under 40 pounds. SafeRide’s Buckeye page says a member aged 14 to 17 who rides without an escort needs a signed minor consent form. See children in NEMT and escorts and caregivers.

How many rides Buckeye members get

Buckeye’s published allowance of short trips differs from one document to the next, as of September 2026:

Document	Short trips a year
Ohio’s 2027 plan comparison, updated July 1, 2026	Up to 15 round trips or 30 one-way under 30 miles from home
Ohio’s 2026 plan comparison, updated September 24, 2025	Up to 15 round trips or 30 one-way under 30 miles from home
Buckeye’s 2026 member handbook, effective January 2026	Up to 20 round trips or 40 one-way per 12 months, with a later line that refers to 15
Buckeye’s transportation page	Up to 20 round trips or 40 one-way
Buckeye’s 2026 provider manual	Up to 30 round trips or 60 one-way per 12 months

Buckeye’s transportation page lists the rides with no cap: chemotherapy or radiation, dialysis, members who cannot transfer out of a wheelchair, and pregnancy and prenatal care, plus NICU visits, well visits for babies under one, and postpartum visits under 30 miles for twelve weeks. It lists dialysis, chemotherapy or radiation, wound care, and hospital discharges as extra trips with prior authorization that do not count toward the maximum. Buckeye reviews every trip of more than 30 miles from home, and works with the member to find care closer to home or covers the trip, depending on its type.

Buckeye also gives bus passes with county limits and pays mileage for one-way trips under 30 miles. On request, or when another provider cannot fill a trip, it books a car or van through a rideshare service or a local transportation company. SafeRide pays the mileage only to family and friend drivers who registered with it, and only for rides booked before the trip. When a member’s allowance runs out, the member’s county job and family services office can arrange rides under 30 miles; see Ohio county NET contracts.

For your planning, the steady Buckeye work is dialysis, cancer treatment, prenatal care, and riders who stay in a wheelchair, and short ambulatory trips rise and fall with each member’s allowance.

How to get Buckeye trips through SafeRide

You join SafeRide, not Buckeye. Its network covers several states, and the SafeRide Health page has the full process; SafeRide in Ohio covers its Ohio work. For Buckeye trips, in order:

1. Get licensed in Ohio. Every for-hire passenger carrier in Ohio needs a PUCO certificate, and wheelchair vans also need an ambulette license and a permit for each van from the State Board of EMFTS. The Ohio guide has the fees and inspections.
2. Fill out SafeRide’s signup form. Use a real NPI and your EIN, say whether you are approved for Medicaid rides and give your Medicaid ID if you have one, and list your liability limits, the Ohio counties you will drive in, your drivers, and the rides per day you can give SafeRide for each vehicle type. An application left unfinished for 30 days starts over.
3. Send your credentialing files. Company insurance must show $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate general liability, $500,000 auto liability, and SafeRide as additional insured. Each vehicle needs its registration and insurance card. Each driver needs a license, a Social Security card, a national background check, a sex offender registry check, a motor vehicle report, a pre-hire drug screen, first aid or CPR or AED training, defensive driving, and wheelchair securement training.
4. Keep up SafeRide’s standards. To stay in the network, SafeRide expects a 100 percent ride response rate, 95 percent acceptance, 95 percent on time, complaints under 1 percent, and kickbacks under 5 percent.

Ohio’s contract with its health plans, revised July 2026, puts a timing floor under every Buckeye ride. Pickup falls within 15 minutes of the scheduled time and no later than 30 minutes after the requested time, a shared ride adds no more than 60 minutes to any rider’s direct trip, and the vendor tries to reach a missing rider before leaving. Log each of those times on your trip log.

What Buckeye trips pay

Your SafeRide agreement sets the rate. Ohio rule 5160-15-28, effective August 1, 2026, says a ride given under an arrangement with a Medicaid health plan is paid by that provider agreement rather than by the state’s fee schedule. For comparison, Ohio’s fee-for-service maximum for a wheelchair van is $31.00 a trip and $1.30 a loaded mile, unchanged since January 1, 2024. Get SafeRide’s rate by ride type in writing before you accept Buckeye work.

When a Buckeye ride goes wrong

The SafeRide guide gives clinics an escalations team at buckeye_escalations@saferidehealth.com. It answers non-urgent issues within one business day, by secure email that gives the member’s name and ID, the date, the ride IDs, the transportation provider, and a summary, with “[Buckeye Escalation] [Date] [Line of Business]” in the subject line. Urgent, same-day, and next-day problems go to a live agent at 1-866-531-0615. The guide is written for Buckeye staff and its provider network, not members, so as a ride company you raise your own issues with your network vendor manager. See how to escalate broker problems.

Who to call

For	Contact
A Buckeye member’s ride	SafeRide for Buckeye, 1-866-531-0615 (TTY 1-855-823-8587)
Non-emergency ambulance	Buckeye Member Services, 1-866-246-4358
Clinic escalations	buckeye_escalations@saferidehealth.com
Mileage reimbursement driver registration	buckeye_driver@saferidehealth.com
Mileage reimbursement claims	buckeye_claims@saferidehealth.com
SafeRide Member Services	855-955-7433
Joining SafeRide’s network	The signup form at saferidehealth.com/what-to-expect-nemt-provider
Buckeye Provider Services	1-866-296-8731

CareSource’s Ohio Medicaid rides run through a different broker; see CareSource Ohio transportation.