Data Story: How Indiana Transformed Access to Healthcare Transportation

Imagine needing critical healthcare but having no way to get there.

For thousands of Medicaid recipients across Indiana, that was the reality. While the federal government requires states to provide non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) for eligible Medicaid beneficiaries, having coverage doesn’t help if you can’t reach your doctor.

Transportation gaps weren’t just an inconvenience — they were a barrier to care, driving up missed appointments, increasing costs, and lowering patient satisfaction.

To fix that, the State of Indiana introduced a brokered model for NEMT: a third-party organization that coordinated transportation across a network of providers. But soon, a new challenge emerged — missed trips.

The broker had no clear way to track performance, identify problem areas, or hold providers accountable. Each missed ride represented a patient who didn’t receive care, a provider losing trust, and a system losing efficiency.

Indiana leaders needed visibility — fast.

The Challenge

CSpring was brought in to solve a problem that went far beyond data: how to restore confidence and accountability in a critical service.

Executives and legislators needed an executive-level dashboard that could answer three simple but vital questions:

1. Where are missed trips happening — and why?

2. Which providers are performing well (or not)?

3. How can we improve service delivery across the state?

The goal wasn’t just to build a dashboard. It was to create a trusted source of truth — a visualization leaders could rely on to make better, faster decisions about patient access and provider performance.

Our Approach

CSpring’s team began by meticulously analyzing the broker’s operational data to uncover patterns behind missed trips. The data was messy and complex — thousands of records, multiple providers, and inconsistent reporting.

But buried inside that data were insights waiting to be visualized.

Leveraging Tableau’s interactive and geospatial capabilities, we built a suite of dashboards that transformed fragmented data into actionable insight:

• Executive NEMT Dashboard — A single view for agency leaders to monitor statewide transportation performance in real time.

• Missed Rides Heat Map — A geospatial dashboard revealing where and why provider-initiated missed rides were concentrated.

• Member Complaint Summary — A visualization of complaint trends, helping leaders identify and address recurring issues.

• Trip Frequency vs. Outcome Dashboard — A performance lens showing which routes, regions, or times were most likely to result in missed rides.

• Provider Scorecard — A standardized, visual “report card” that assessed how well each transportation provider was meeting contractual requirements.

To make these dashboards actionable for decision-makers, we simplified the data story into three clear categories of missed trip causes, enabling leaders to see the issue and respond instantly.

The result wasn’t just a set of dashboards — it was a shift in how Indiana managed transportation performance.

The Outcome

With CSpring’s Tableau dashboards, Indiana’s healthcare leaders can now:

• Monitor transportation performance in real time

• Identify at-risk areas before problems escalate

• Hold providers accountable to measurable standards

• Improve satisfaction for riders and healthcare providers alike

Executives and legislators now have the visibility they need to calculate ROI, target interventions, and deliver better outcomes for Hoosiers who depend on NEMT services.

And the impact reaches beyond transportation. Appointment no-shows cost the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $150 billion annually. By using trusted, accessible dashboards, Indiana’s leaders are not just reducing missed trips — they’re reducing costs, improving health equity, and restoring confidence in public systems.

CSpring’s Perspective

At CSpring, we believe data visualization should do more than report — it should reveal and empower.

Our work with Indiana’s NEMT program embodies that belief. By turning operational chaos into decision-ready insight, we helped leaders bridge the gap between data and action, and practitioners build dashboards people actually use.

Because clarity doesn’t come from dashboards themselves — it comes from what happens when people trust them.

Ready to move from dashboard noise to decision clarity?
 Schedule a Conversation or Read More Success Stories