More than a month into a contract with an Arizona-based startup to coordinate transportation to medical appointments for Connecticut Medicaid members, the company's leaders, state legislators and patients seem to be at odds over how much it has improved after a rocky start.

Josh Komenda, president of Veyo, which took over the Department of Social Services contract for non-emergency medical transportation last fall, told members of the Medical Assistance Program Oversight Committee in Hartford on Friday that his company had made "significant progress."

"The vast majority of rides are moving successfully," he said.

It was the second time Komenda had reported to the committee since users of the service complained in the first weeks of 2018 that they were on hold for more than an hour while trying to schedule rides by phone, were left in their doctors' waiting rooms or never picked up at all.

But when members of the committee asked Komenda how many calls were being dropped before callers spoke to a Veyo employee, how many Spanish-speaking call center employees Veyo has hired and how patients who have paid for their own rides might get reimbursed, he didn't provide answers.

And while Komenda claimed that hiring and training more call center employees has decreased hold times to an average of three minutes and said the longest time people spent on the phone this week was 15 minutes, members of the committee and other speakers said Friday that problems persist.

"The left and the right don't know what's going on, and that's really, really concerning to me," said state Rep. Catherine Abercrombie, the co-chairwoman of the legislature's Human Services Committee.

Catherine Risigo-Wickline, an occupational therapist appointed to the committee, said at the meeting Friday that one child with autism had been left at her practice's office for four hours without a ride home.

Connecticut Hospital Association Vice President for Advocacy Karen Buckley, who has met several times with Komenda, said Friday that the company had inherited some problems from its predecessor, Logisticare — which was the subject of its own set of recurring complaints — and that DSS officials should have done a better job of overseeing the transition last autumn.

But, she said many of the complaints against Veyo had persisted into the second month of its contract with DSS.

"I still think there's lots of improvement to go," she said.

Two local Medicaid members who experienced long hold times and repeated missed rides while trying to use Veyo said this week that they recently were able to schedule their rides and that companies contracted with Veyo successfully had taken them to some appointments, but they still weren't satisfied with the service.

Tricia Volpe, who missed several appointments in January because rides she scheduled with Veyo never arrived, said Friday that she successfully had used Veyo to get rides to her physical therapist in the past several weeks.

But the successful rides were outnumbered by instances when she was on hold for up to 45 minutes, never got picked up from her house or had to call the transportation companies directly to determine whether they were going to arrive.

Lorraine Spath said that after several missed rides to appointments at her oncologist and cardiologists' offices, she finally was picked up last week at her home in Groton for a 5:15 p.m. appointment in Norwich.

But the driver from Med-X Transportation was late, and Spath didn't have the car to herself.

"I was shocked, because there were two other people in the car, and it was quarter to 5," Spath said. By the time one of the other people in the Med-X car was dropped off, she said, she had missed her appointment.

When she called to complain, a Veyo employee told her the company records showed she had canceled the ride. Spath was told Veyo was investigating her claim.

"How many times are they doing this to other people?" she asked. "It's totally ridiculous."

DSS Medical Director Robert Zavoski told the committee Friday that DSS has issued a $1,000 sanction against Veyo because a child cancer patient was taken on a ride with other patients in the car despite a doctor's determination that the child's immune system was compromised.

Zavoski said all Medicaid recipients still are entitled to rides scheduled through Veyo, and that the department plans to ensure that Veyo's call center service improves.

"Our plan right now is to continue to work as hard as we can to get the current vendor to be as successful as they possibly can be," he said in response to a question about whether Veyo might be replaced with another company. "Is it perfect? No, not by any means ... but our bottom line is that we're going to make this work."

m.shanahan@theday.com