Alum’s national company takes patients to doctors without worry

What good is a doctor’s appointment if you can’t get there?

Alaina Macía, MBA 2002, is president and CEO of Medical Transportation Management Inc., a national leader in the healthcare transit industry. Based in St. Louis, MTM operates in all 50 states and provides people with 35 million rides a year.

The non-emergency medical transportation broker mainly serves Medicaid members, along with Medicare and Medicare Advantage members. Its client base also includes state and county governments, departments for aging, public transit agencies, community groups, and managed care organizations.

Getting people to medical appointments is only part of the battle to improve health outcomes, Macía said. Her vision is to ensure all sorts of services are available to people, including access to work, education, and social services.

“Everybody’s aware of the social determinants of health. And transportation is a key in SDOH,” she said. “Your healthcare outcomes are dictated by where you live, your access to fresh groceries, your ability to access quality healthcare, education, a good job. Safety as well. You can’t take for granted that you can go out and jog on the street in a nice neighborhood.”

Macía’s father, Lynn Griswold, and her stepmother, Peggy Griswold, founded the company in 1995 after they realized the difficulty that health plans and government organizations encountered with transportation services.

When Macía took the reins, she was 27, and the company’s annual revenue was $30 million. By 2005, she was MTM’s CEO. Today, its annual revenue is $1.75 billion.

“I was given the opportunity to learn on the job and make good decisions and make some not-so-great ones and learn from them and grow the business,” she said.

Learning through the case study approach, working in team settings, working on financial modeling really gave me the toolkit to walk into this job and hit the ground running.

—Alaina Macía

She credits Olin with preparing her for success and applauds its claim on the business of health. “It all ties together,” said Macía, who’s on WashU’s Board of Trustees. “I’m glad to hear that Olin is going down this path.”

Alaina Macía was honored as a Distinguished Alumni on March 27. This article is excerpted from the cover story "The Business of Health" in 2024's Olin Business magazine.