L.A. Care Transportation: Call the Car Rides, PCS Forms, and How Companies Get the Trips

L.A. Care Health Plan is the public Medi-Cal plan for Los Angeles County. DHCS counted 2,078,171 L.A. Care Medi-Cal members in August 2026, and L.A. Care calls itself the largest publicly operated health plan in the country. Call the Car has arranged its rides since a phased start on March 1, 2019. Statewide Medi-Cal enrollment, van rules, and fee-for-service rates are in the California guide, and the county ambulette license and City of Los Angeles van permits are on the Los Angeles County page.

Who books L.A. Care rides

An L.A. Care member books by calling Member Services at 1-888-839-9909 (TTY 711) and choosing the transportation prompt, any hour of any day. Call the Car’s contact page, as of September 2026, lists that same number as its L.A. Care Medi-Cal line. So the member calls L.A. Care, and Call the Car turns the call into a trip. L.A. Care Medicare Plus, the plan’s dual special needs plan, books on 1-833-522-3767, and L.A. Care Covered on 1-855-270-2327.

The Medi-Cal provider manual lists L.A. Care in Los Angeles County “and plan partners.” A member who joins L.A. Care can pick L.A. Care itself or one of two partners, Anthem Blue Cross or Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan, and each partner books its own members’ rides.

The member’s plan	Ride line	Who arranges the ride
L.A. Care	1-888-839-9909, 24 hours	Call the Car
Blue Shield of California Promise	1-877-433-2178, 24 hours	Call the Car, which lists the same line
Anthem Blue Cross	1-877-931-4755, weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (as of January 2026)	Modivcare, which lists the same line for Anthem

How much notice L.A. Care members give

L.A. Care’s 2026 member handbook (LA0262, October 2025) asks members to call at least 48 hours ahead, Monday to Friday, for a routine wheelchair, gurney, or ambulance ride their provider prescribed. A car or taxi ride needs at least 3 hours. L.A. Care’s notice to network providers of May 23, 2024 listed the windows by trip type:

Trip	Minimum notice
NEMT hospital discharge or transfer	Same day
Any other NEMT trip	2 business days
NMT, door to door	2 business days
NMT, curb to curb	3 hours

L.A. Care sent that notice during a Call the Car system outage, to ease call volume. For a van company, it means a routine wheelchair trip can reach your schedule with as little as two business days of notice, and a discharge the same day.

The L.A. Care PCS form

Every L.A. Care wheelchair van, gurney van, ambulance, or air trip needs a Physician Certification Statement (PCS). L.A. Care’s own version is form LA6957, dated August 2025, and Call the Car’s site links the same form as its L.A. Care form. The prescriber faxes it to L.A. Care’s Utilization Review Transportation Unit at 213-438-2201, signed. L.A. Care’s provider page asks that it reach L.A. Care within 24 hours of the NEMT trip being performed.

• How long it lasts. Up to one year from the provider’s signature, with start and end dates inside a 12-month maximum.
• One mode. The prescriber checks one box: basic, advanced, or specialty care ambulance, litter (gurney) van, wheelchair van, or air. A bariatric wheelchair or litter adds the member’s height and weight.
• Air. Needs L.A. Care’s prior authorization and clinical records sent to the same fax.
• Who signs. A physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, certified nurse midwife, dentist, mental health professional, or substance use disorder provider.
• No edits. Neither L.A. Care nor its transportation vendor may change the form after it is sent. A different mode needs a new form from the provider.

The back of the form lists L.A. Care’s own examples, which tell you which trips your vans will get:

Mode	L.A. Care’s examples (form LA6957)
Wheelchair van	A member who cannot stand or walk without help and needs door-to-door assistance, even one using a walker or crutches. Also severe mental confusion, paraplegia, dialysis, and chronic oxygen without monitoring.
Litter (gurney) van	A member who must ride lying down and needs extra equipment, such as a home with four or more steps, oxygen of 4 liters or less, or a bariatric gurney for 250 pounds or more
BLS ambulance	IV medication or monitoring between facilities, oxygen started recently, more than 5 liters of oxygen with monitoring, or a hospital to psychiatric facility move

L.A. Care’s provider page, restating DHCS All Plan Letter 22-008, needs no PCS for a move from an emergency room to an inpatient bed, or from an acute hospital stay to a skilled nursing, intermediate care, or inpatient psychiatric facility. Car and bus rides need none as long as the member walks. See prior authorization and stretcher vans.

What L.A. Care measures Call the Car on

L.A. Care’s Board of Governors gets a transportation report at its meetings, with the targets L.A. Care holds Call the Car to. These figures come from the report dated August 13, 2026, in the September 3, 2026 board packet. July numbers were preliminary.

What L.A. Care checks	Target	July 2026
Trips dispatched	No target	427,998
Scheduled trips on time, pickup and drop-off	98% or better	98%, on 224,589 trips
Will-call returns on time	100%	100%, on 124,277 trips
Hospital discharges taken within 3 hours	100%	100%, on 3,401 trips
Hospital transfers taken within 3 hours	100%	100%
Pickups missed by the provider	Under 0.25%	0.03%, or 142 trips
Member grievances	Under 0.5%	0.01%
Calls answered within 30 seconds	80%	76%

Hospital discharges and transfers are the measure Call the Car kept missing. They stood at 99% in L.A. Care’s September 2025 report and at 98% to 99% in February and March 2026, when some rides came after the 3 hours. L.A. Care activated a supplemental vendor, All Town, on May 1, 2025, for up to 40 NEMT trips a day, and the board reports show 100% of All Town’s discharge and transfer trips on time from May to July 2026.

For a move from a hospital to a nursing or psychiatric facility, the 3 hours come from APL 22-008, which lets the hospital book a company outside the network, at the plan’s cost, when the ride runs late. For other hospital discharges, the 3 hours are a term of L.A. Care’s contract with Call the Car. See hospital discharge transportation.

What changed for L.A. Care trips in 2026

On March 16, 2026, L.A. Care and Call the Car started new rules for how members use the benefit. L.A. Care filed notice with DHCS on March 6, Call the Car texted members on March 12, and L.A. Care sent members a letter on April 1. The August 13, 2026 board report lists the rules:

• Will-call returns. The member activates the ride home within 5 hours of the appointment time.
• Pharmacy trips. Rides go to a pharmacy within 5 to 10 miles of the member’s location, and anyone taking more than one pharmacy trip a week is checked.
• Frequent riders. Appointments are validated for members averaging more than one trip a day, above 31 a month.
• Methadone and other directly observed therapy. The member texts Call the Car when ready, and the pickup is sent then.

L.A. Care reported fewer no-shows and fewer pharmacy trips and miles from April through July 2026. For your drivers, it means return trips on these rides start from the member’s call or text, not a fixed time, inside a known window. See will-call trips and managing will-call trips.

How your company gets L.A. Care trips

L.A. Care’s NEMT and NMT vendor is Call the Car, so for most companies the Call the Car subcontract is the way in.

1. Enroll in Medi-Cal through PAVE. DHCS All Plan Letter 22-008 lets a plan use a company for only 120 days while its enrollment is pending. The forms and fees are in the California guide.
2. Get your local permits. Pickups in unincorporated areas need the County ambulette license, and pickups inside the City of Los Angeles need a LADOT permit for each van, driver, and attendant. See the Los Angeles County page.
3. Send Call the Car’s subcontractor form. It asks for your NPI, Medi-Cal ID, permits, counties, drivers, vehicles, and levels of service, and whether your enrollment is approved or pending. The Call the Car guide covers each field.
4. Book the credentialing inspection. Call the Car’s site links an online sign-up for vehicle inspections, and its subcontractor portal is vendors.callthecar.com.
5. Ask about Blue Shield Promise. Its Los Angeles County members ride through Call the Car too, so ask whether your subcontract covers both plans. For Anthem Blue Cross members, apply to Modivcare in California.

Your rate is the one in your Call the Car subcontract. Compare it with the Medi-Cal fee-for-service maximums in the California guide, and ask how Call the Car pays will-call waiting and no-shows. See negotiating broker rates.

What to do first

1. Check your PAVE status. A plan can keep a pending company for only 120 days.
2. Price discharge work. L.A. Care holds every hospital discharge and transfer to 3 hours, the trip type it has added capacity for.
3. Plan for will-call returns. Members activate them within 5 hours of the appointment time, and L.A. Care expects every one on time.
4. Give clinics the PCS fax. Dialysis centers and doctors’ offices send form LA6957 to 213-438-2201, so members can book at least 48 hours ahead.
5. Apply for Health Net rides too. Health Net, the county’s other large Medi-Cal plan, uses Modivcare for members of its direct network and shared-risk medical groups. See Health Net Medi-Cal.