Colorado investigates ‘unprecedented’ scheme by drivers paid to transport Medicaid patients hundreds of miles a day

The patients flocked to metro Denver methadone clinics in mid to late summer, five or six to a car. Most were users of illicit opioids, including fentanyl. Many were homeless.

And all were from Pueblo or other parts of southern Colorado, driven up Interstate 25 by independent transportation contractors who suddenly had flooded the state’s Medicaid system.

As clinics scrambled to process the patients, they thought it was odd so many were coming from outside of metro Denver — especially while clinics were open and waiting in southern Colorado, some recalled later to The Denver Post. Providers at the methadone facilities, which are tightly regulated and highly stigmatized, made note of the vehicles dropping off these new patients: new SUVs with temporary tags, driven by men who often spoke accented English and who all had enrolled in a lucrative program that paid them to drive patients to the doctor.

The drivers billed Medicaid for every mile they drove, on a per-patient basis. The more-than-200-mile round trip between Pueblo and Denver, with a packed car, could net well over $10,000 a day.