Introducing Uber Health: a medical transportation solution

Uber Health is a service that allows healthcare facilities to provide affordable and easily accessible transportation solution to patients.

The healthcare facilities can partner with Uber Health to order transport services for their patients. The service is also being made more accessible through an Uber Health API that can be integrated with healthcare products.

Key features

A number of key features aim to make healthcare transport more reliable and accessible for patients.

• Ride Scheduling for Patients: The new API offers flexible ride scheduling for patients, caregiver professionals, and medical staff. The healthcare facilities and their officials or the coordinators can book and schedule Uber Health rides for their patients, the caregiver professionals, and medical staff. The service quotes the price of the ride immediately and without the least delay. The service also allows scheduling and managing several rides at once by using one single dashboard interface;
• Non-smartphone Access for Patients: Even without using the Uber app or any smartphone one can book and schedule a ride with Uber Health just by using text message. There is now a new option of on-call booking of rides is soon going to be introduced as well. The service will also be equipped with all the necessary documentation and education tools to help users who are using the service for the first time;
• Easy Billing, Reporting, and Management: A key feature of the Uber Health service is easy billing, reporting and managing tools that allow the users to keep track of spending, monthly billing on rides and reports corresponding to the scheduling of rides and appointments and
• HIPAA Compliant Service: Uber Health is a fully HIPAA compliant service meeting all the standards and regulations prescribed by the regulatory body. To meet the compliance standards even more precisely Uber Health at present is working to build, implement and customise different safety regulations and measures.

Digital healthcare

Uber became synonymous with the lifestyle of an entire generation – when digital experts were still arguing about the importance of app development, Uber made the app that transformed public transport. After revolutionising transport, Uber has now entered digital healthcare with its unique focus on delivering services where it is most needed.

Millions of Americans every year miss doctor appointments due to lack of proper transport facility. The difficulty is particularly greater in some parts of the country or in some cities. The patients suffering from chronic diseases or life-threatening conditions are the worst-hit populace from this condition. This is where non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) services like Uber Health are making inroads. The signs are really ripe with the fact that Uber Health like its flagship Uber ridesharing will become popular and elementary to the landscape of health services.

A timeline of events

Uber Health was conceptualised by taking inspiration from the success of Uber transport app and services. In 2016, Uber announced a partnership with a healthcare ride provider digital solution called Circulation.

Circulation stated at that time the whole NEMT sector used to experience a whopping 25–50% instances of not showing up while for Uber the percentage was just 8%. Circulation decided to partner with Uber solely for the reason that the company wished to achieve 95% of patient arrival rate for medical appointments.

In the same year, another leading ride-sharing service Lyft also entered into NEMT space and partnered with Aging2.0 which is an innovative company working for years in the area of senior healthcare.

By the next year, both Uber and Lyft reached out to other leading medical transportation service providers and thus brought LogistiCare, the biggest NEMT player onboard. Soon other partnerships flowed in and the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) with the emergence of services like Uber Health got a fresh breath of energy.

Impact on healthcare

Uber Health and the likes are going to have really far-reaching impact on healthcare and medical treatment standards and facilities. With the increasing rate of appointment fulfilment, healthcare revenues will get a big boost. The standard of healthcare will have a never-before push with the timely outreach of care facilities and caregivers. Both efficiencies of care facilities and affordability of the patient transport will bring a lot of positive energies in the entire sector.

Uber brought one revolution with its paradigm-shifting ridesharing app. Now, in countries where medical transportation still remains a big challenge, Uber Health can bring another people-friendly revolution that will change the face of instant care, chronic care, and non-emergency care forever.

Atman Rathod
CMARIX TechnoLabs
+1 631-206-6051
biz@cmarix.com
www.cmarix.com
@RathodAtman