Dive Brief:
- Uber Health is partnering with specialty risk transfer and care coordination company Carisk on transportation for injured workers and ambulatory patients with chronic conditions like opioid dependence.
- Uber will ferry Carisk's eligible patient population to and from their medical appointments for direct payments from Carisk or reimbursed through the patient's insurance carrier. Carisk expects eligible patients to number in the thousands once it finalizes a separate partnership with one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the country, Carisk's SVP of clinical strategy Alana Letourneau told Healthcare Dive.
- The deal announced June 13 is the latest as giants Uber and Lyft edge their way into the lucrative healthcare market.
Dive Insight:
Stakeholders across the industry are engaging with ride-hailing companies in an attempt to stem missed appointments, which can stress provider margins and harm patients' quality of care. Medicare Advantage and other payer coverage of such non-traditional health measures is spurring the efforts.
Millions of Americans are estimated to miss doctors appointments due to a lack of reliable transportation, many of them low-income, bloating healthcare costs. Still, evidence is mixed on whether or not the attention to transportation actually reduce patient no-show rates.
A number of hospitals and health systems including Maryland-based MedStar Health and New Jersey's HackensackUMC have jumped on the bandwagon as well. Ambulance company American Medical Response teamed up with Lyft to provide non-emergency transport for patients in 42 states.
On the payer and health IT side, Blue Cross Blue Shield started offering Lyft rides to select beneficiaries in 2017, and tech solutions giant Allscripts joined with Lyft to develop a healthcare platform for NEMT.
Lyft upgraded its Concierge API product in response to growing payer reimbursement. Currently, roughly a third of Lyft riders use the app for medical appointments.
Uber formed a separate division, called Uber Health, in March of 2018, taking advantage of its name brand and past success in the space to gain share in the $3 billion market.
Its platform allows healthcare workers to book a ride on demand or schedule one in advance for a patient. The passenger is then alerted via text or phone call.
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Carisk is an eight-year-old company that began as a managed care organization.