[msb-alumni] FYI: Uber, Lyft say they can help fill a medical gap
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2018 14:48:17 -0500
BlankUber, Lyft say they can help fill a medical gap . Carolyn Y. Johnson.
Missed appointments are a major problem, but early results are mixed
Ride-hailing companies have plunged into the health-care business, seeing a big
opportunity in ferrying the 3.6 million people who miss medical appointments
each year to their doctors' offices. On Thursday, Uber announced the public
launch of Uber Health, a dashboard that will allow health-care providers to
schedule rides for patients. Lyft already has crafted several partnerships over
the past few years, working with health insurers, hospital systems and medical
transport services to help patients get to and from medical care providers in
nonemergency situations.
No-show patients are a real problem in the medical sector, but it is far from
clear whether ride-hailing services scheduled by providers are the solution. A
study of nearly 800 Medicaid patients in West Philadelphia found that offering
to schedule free Lyft rides to and from primary-care appointments did not
decrease the number of missed appointments compared with
a group of people not offered the service. That work, published in the journal
JAMA Internal Medicine last month, calls into question whether simply expanding
the availability of ride-hailing services would help solve the problem.
"We really thought ride-shares would be super convenient. We were pretty
surprised, actually, it did not work out," said Krisda H. Chaiyachati, a
primary-care provider at the University of Pennsylvania and the Veterans
Affairs
Medical Center. "I think we [as providers] tend to apply our choices of how we
live our lives, and we kind of impose it on our patients' lives. We probably all
use ride-sharing services -- I used one this morning. We think the same thing
is
going to apply to a sick person or a poor person, and that might not be true."
Individual companies have reported benefits. CareMore Health System found in a
pilot study in 2016 that using Lyft was cheaper than other forms of
transportation, and patients spent less time waiting for a ride.
American Medical Response, a leading medical transportation company, has
reduced
complaints by 50 percent since partnering with Lyft. Chaiyachati said the study
might provide clues about which patients could benefit from ride-hailing help.
The study examined the use of taxi alternatives in getting patients to
primary-care appointments, but it is possible that it might be more useful in
settings where adherence to appointments can be more critical, such as
oncology.
"The study results really contradicted what we've seen with other partners,
again and again," said Gyre Renwick, a vice president of Lyft Business. Renwick
said Lyft has been targeting groups of people, including elderly and poor
patients in areas underserved by public transportation, as well as people for
whom missing an appointment - such as for dialysis or cancer treatment - could
have
major health repercussions and cause expensive hospitalizations.
Uber has been testing its health service since last summer. One lesson: Many of
the patients
who use the service had not used Uber before, and many did not have a
smartphone. The company has had to use text messages to alert people without
the
Uber app or a smartphone that their rides were waiting - and it even used
printouts and phone calls to get in touch with some people.
"We've moved to a paper-based communication strategy, where we have forms we
can
provide for our customers," said Jay Holley, head of partnerships at Uber
Health. "Circle the make, model, license plate number [of the vehicle providing
the ride], and help people in the most analog possible way for a tech company."
Who pays for the service depends on the partnership. Patients with Medicaid
have
transportation benefits that can be billed for the service. Providers often pay
for the rides out of their own funds.
One of the benefits of the digital services is accountability, long an area of
medical spending that has been ripe
for fraud, waste and abuse. Instead of paper receipts and faxes, the companies'
digital platforms can help ensure that rides are taking place as scheduled.
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