Getting patients to and from medical appointments safely and on-time

Imran Cronk is a co-founder and CEO of Ride Health, a platform that helps patients get rides to and from their medical appointments. There is a transportation barrier. It not only affects patients, it also affects health care providers. Imran has an amazing story of how human compassion and empathy turned into an idea.

He was a volunteer in a hospital and a patient was discharged around midnight with no ride home. This man was also older and had compromised vision, yet he was planning to walk 8 or 9 miles home since he didn’t have any other options. Imran gave the man a ride home. This not only helped a fellow human in need. It also sparked the idea for Ride Health.

Episode Highlights:

How critical barriers to transportation include having lower incomes, being elderly or disabled, and living in rural areas.
How there are great resources for emergencies, but non-emergency resources are what Ride Health focuses on.
One of the problems with the existing NEMT system is that the payer system is very fragmented.
It also lacks transparency about whether a driver will show up or not. Patients call a call centre 72 hours to a week in advance and

then hope someone shows up before their appointment.
There is a definite need for something more organized and transparent to be in place.
A couple of years ago they began mapping out the goals for Ride Health and began their “listening tour”.
They spent a lot of time wireframing. The vision was to enable a care coordinator could arrange rides on patients behalf and the patients

would receive SMS communication to confirm the ride.
When they were thinking about how to design the communication, they had to think about the lowest common denominator of technological capability.
The coordinator goes into their web-based platform, this is a HIPAA compliant platform and adds basic patient information.
After the appointment is set up the patient receives a call or SMS message 24-hours in advance.
They then have the option to confirm or cancel the ride. They also get a reminder one hour before the arrival time.
This patient-centred system also allows the patient to designate when they are ready to come home.
They work with a variety of transportation services.
They had to think really hard about the user experience to make it as simple as possible but also flexible to diverse needs.
They also have an instant ride option and have taken care not to clutter the user interface with too much stuff.
The vision is to be the global infrastructure for access to care, whether it’s through transportation or other types of barriers that

need to be addressed.
In user surveys of folks scheduling rides, 100% of them have expressed that they want to continue using Ride Health.
The importance of spending time with people who will actually be using your product.

Listen to this HealthRedesigned podcast episode on Hanno's website

Resources:

Ride Health
Non-Emergency Medical Transportation