Care coordination company partners with Uber Health to provide patient transportation solution

Care coordination company Carisk Partners announced it will team up with Uber Health to provide transportation for patients, according to a press release published in Business Wire on June 13. Carisk said the partnership will help reduce travel complications for patients who may otherwise miss or show up late for appointments, thus breaking down a barrier to care that often compromises patient outcomes and creates higher healthcare costs. 

Carisk CEO Joseph Berardo Jr. said in the press release that the company chose Uber Health in part due to its easy-to-use platform.

“Their technology allows us to coordinate multiple rides from the web dashboard, making it easy to book, reschedule, and get a clear overview of where each rider and driver is with real-time trip status,” Berardo Jr. said in the press release. “We can also view and export records to simplify billing.”

Although Carisk focuses primarily on care for injured workers, Carisk’s partnership with Uber reflects a growing trend in the healthcare world toward utilizing ride-share services to improve access to quality care. In rule-making for both 2019 and 2020, Medicare Advantage (MA) has increasingly allowed insurers to include more supplemental benefits in MA plans that are not necessarily health-related but have a reasonable expectation of improving or maintaining the health or overall function of enrollees. These benefits include transportation to and from appointments as well as grocery delivery services.

Both Uber and its rival, Lyft, are competing to gain an early edge in the healthcare industry, and Lyft said in February that nearly one-third of its users reportedly use Lyft for transportation to or from a medical appointment. Lyft’s vice president of healthcare, Megan Callahan, discussed the benefits of ride-share services for MA plans in a May interview with HealthLeaders Media.