Polk County Medical Transportation: No County Van Permit, and Who Pays for the Rides

Polk sits between two counties that license wheelchair vans and does not license them itself. Osceola County to the east permits each van after a commission hearing, and Hillsborough County to the west licenses them as handicabs under its vehicle-for-hire ordinance. Polk’s code regulates ambulances and exempts routine stretcher trips. The rides come from Citrus Connection, which coordinates the state-funded program, and from the Medicaid brokers.

Florida has no state NEMT license either, so every company enrolls with Florida Medicaid through AHCA and joins the brokers its county’s plans use. The Florida guide covers enrollment, screening, and state vehicle rules, and the Florida NEMT license guide lists the counties that do license vans.

Does Polk County license wheelchair or stretcher vans?

No. Chapter 11.8 of the county code, titled Vehicles for Hire, holds one article: the certificate of public convenience and necessity ordinance, adopted as Ordinance 12-029 on September 18, 2012. It sets up the certificate for basic and advanced life support services and air ambulances. A certificate is required before a company gives emergency care or transport, and for most service types, from basic life support transport to interfacility ambulance transport. The first article of the chapter is reserved, and nothing in the chapter mentions wheelchair vans.

Stretcher vans are named, and exempted. Section 11.8-17(b)(3) exempts vehicles that carry people on stretchers to routine medical treatment when they do not need, and are not likely to need, basic or advanced life support on the way. The ordinance calls that service alternative transportation, also known as nonambulance, nonmedical stretcher transport. Basic life support, as the ordinance defines it, includes giving oxygen, so a service that gives oxygen or any other life support on the way is an ambulance service, which needs a state license and a county certificate. See stretcher van requirements.

What the county does require is a local business tax receipt from the Tax Collector:

Polk County business tax (secs. 9-137 and 9-139)	Yearly tax
Class A, a business the state does not license, certify, or register	$31.50
Class B, a business the state licenses, certifies, or registers	$57.75
Moving the receipt to a new location or owner, or renaming it	10% of the tax, from $3 to $25

Inside a city, check its code too. Lakeland’s chapter 106 licenses taxicabs, defined as any motor vehicle carrying people for pay on occasional trips, with a $500 yearly certificate fee for the first five cabs, $50 for each cab after that, and insurance of $100,000 per person, $300,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property. It has no section on wheelchair or stretcher vans, so ask the City of Lakeland whether it treats your vans as taxicabs before you open an office there.

Who arranges medical transportation in Polk County

What	Who arranges it	Phone
State-funded and ADA paratransit rides	Citrus Connection’s Regional Mobility Call Center, 1120 George Jenkins Blvd., Lakeland	863-534-5500, toll free 855-765-5287
Coordination agreements for agencies that carry their own clients	Lakeland Area Mass Transit District, 1212 George Jenkins Blvd., Lakeland	863-733-4214
Medicaid rides for members not in a health plan	MTM Health, for Region D	1-844-239-5974
Medicaid rides for plan members	Each plan’s broker: Alivi, Ride2MD, Modivcare, or MTM Health	Through the plan
Ambulance certificates	The county’s fire rescue division, under chapter 11.8	Through the county

How Citrus Connection runs state-funded rides

The Lakeland Area Mass Transit District, doing business as Citrus Connection, has a new five-year term as Polk’s community transportation coordinator:

Step	Date
Polk TPO adopts Resolution 2026-01 recommending Citrus Connection, with the local board’s unanimous support	February 12, 2026
Citrus Connection sends its letter of interest to the state	May 13, 2026
Commission for the Transportation Disadvantaged approves	June 11, 2026
New term	July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2031

Citrus Connection drives most trips itself and contracts with no transportation operators. The rest go to agencies with coordination agreements, which carry their own program participants in their own vehicles. Its spring 2026 list:

Agency	Service	Riders
Alliance for Independence	Ambulatory and wheelchair	Program participants
ROAR (Noah’s Ark)	Ambulatory and wheelchair	Program participants
Peace River Center	Ambulatory and wheelchair	Program participants
Polk Training Center	Ambulatory and wheelchair	Program participants
Sunrise Community of Polk County	Ambulatory and wheelchair	Program participants
TLC Comfort Care LLC	Ambulatory and wheelchair	Program participants, and open to the public

The last is a private company, which shows a coordination agreement is not only for nonprofits. In fiscal 2024-25 the county’s system gave 332,561 trips: 261,515 by Citrus Connection and 71,046 by coordination contractors. Of those, 112,091 were medical, and the state Medicaid agency paid for 11,316. The system ran 130 vehicles, 111 of them wheelchair accessible, and 237 drivers, 120 of them with coordination contractors. It cost $17.92 per trip and $38.02 per paratransit trip. From April to June 2026, Citrus Connection gave 21,305 paratransit trips (15,588 ADA and 5,717 state-funded), coordination contractors gave 16,356, no trip was denied, and 93% ran on time.

What Citrus Connection is paid and what it requires

State trip-grant rate per passenger mile	2025-26	2026-27
Ambulatory	$5.11	$5.19
Wheelchair	$8.76	$8.90

Polk is paid by the mile, not by the trip. These are the rates the state’s trip grant pays for riders no agency sponsors, and the grant for 2025-26 was $1,461,104, of which $1,369,021, or 94%, was spent. The state’s draft allocation for 2026-27 is $1,390,800, plus a local match of $154,533.

The service plan sets these standards for the coordinated system:

• Insurance. A $300,000 combined single limit, above the state floor of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident in Rule 41-2.006.
• Driver checks. A national criminal records check, a national sex offender check, a local county criminal check, a motor vehicle record check, and a drug test. Citrus Connection has no CPR or first aid policy.
• On the road. Two-way communication with your base, working air conditioning and heat, photo ID in view, drivers who say their name and company at pickup, and no eating, drinking, or smoking.
• Timing. 90% on time, within 15 minutes of the scheduled pickup, and will-call returns within an hour during the day. Riders book state-funded trips at least 72 hours ahead.
• Pay. Operators invoice by the end of the week after service and are paid within 45 days of an approved invoice.

State-funded service in 2026

• No more out-of-county trips. From July 2026, Citrus Connection no longer provides state-funded trips outside Polk, except short trips across the line for riders who live near it. State-funded riders who need care in another county now need another way to get there.
• No stretcher trips. The plan says Citrus Connection does not provide or contract stretcher transport in the state-funded program.
• A new five-year plan. The Polk Transportation Disadvantaged Service Plan for 2026-27 through 2030-31 was set for the local board’s September 14, 2026 meeting.
• Grants for private companies. The state’s Innovative Service Development grant accepts applications from coordinators and from what the state calls non-traditional transportation service providers, which include private companies, up to $750,000 for a one-county project with a 10% local match. For 2026-27 a Polk private provider asked for $181,212 to drive riders who had used up their health plan’s trip limit, and the state ruled the application incomplete for a missing rate model. On June 11, 2026 the commission tabled its 2026-27 award decisions. See NEMT grants.

Medicaid rides in Polk County

Polk is in Medicaid Region D. Under the state’s NEMT waiver for July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2027, MTM Health serves members who are not in a plan, and its 2025 capacity analysis listed 36 vehicles in Polk: 29 cab and 7 lift, with no stretcher van. Plan members book with their plan’s broker. As of August 31, 2026:

Plan	Polk members	Broker for its rides
Sunshine Health	53,366	Alivi
Simply Healthcare	34,132	Ride2MD
Humana Medical Plan	20,180	Modivcare
Aetna Better Health	11,926	Modivcare
UnitedHealthcare Community Plan	11,752	MTM Health, since March 1, 2026
Florida Community Care	1,905	Ride2MD

The county had 133,403 members in these comprehensive plans that month, and the top three plans covered more than 80% of them.

What to do first in Polk County

1. Get your county business tax receipt from the Polk County Tax Collector at 863-534-4700, and ask the city where your office sits whether it charges its own.
2. Ask for the open board seat. The Local Coordinating Board’s seat for the local private for-profit transportation industry was vacant in the plan dated September 14, 2026. Call the Polk TPO at 863-534-6486. The board meets at the County Administration Building, 330 W. Church Street in Bartow, next on October 26, 2026.
3. Ask Citrus Connection about a coordination agreement at 863-733-4214 if you carry a defined group of riders, such as a facility’s residents. See government NEMT contracts.
4. Sell the trips the county program no longer covers. Out-of-county medical trips and stretcher trips are outside the state-funded program now, which leaves room for private pay rides and facility contracts.
5. Enroll with Florida Medicaid and apply to Alivi and Ride2MD, which arrange rides for the two largest plans in the county, then to Modivcare and MTM Health.