San Francisco, CA. – Uber and Lyft both recently announced new ventures in the healthcare space. Both are now optimized to let healthcare professionals arrange, pay for and manage transportation for patients.
Uber – The popular rideshare service launched a HIPPA compliant dashboard for HCPs to have a one-stop-shop to manage transportation for patients. The dashboard allows staff to arrange for multiple patient rides, dive deep into the office’s ride analytics and the recipient doesn’t need to have a smartphone or the Uber app to use the service.
Lyft – Like Uber, Lyft launched the option for HCPs to schedule and manage ride services for patients. They partnered with Allscripts to give the more than 180,000 doctors that use their EHR service access to the healthcare section of the app. And just like Uber, patients do not have to be tech savvy to use the service which is making for a great customer experience.
You can read more about both new ventures here (Uber) and here (Lyft).
Why This Matters –
This shift is another homerun for a company (or companies in this instance) to take advantage of shifting expectations and launch new services using existing platforms to make it easier for the end user: patients.
What has us equally as jazzed: the potential for increased adherence through rideshare services. When patients can’t get to their necessary appointments to manage their health, obviously their health declines. It will be interesting to see the impact of these new services to the industry that reported over 125,000 deaths, 10 percent of hospitalizations and cost the American healthcare system between $100 – $289 billion per year.
This announcement also follows along with two commercial trends we’re tracking this year:
From Patient-Centricity to Patient Intimacy- Healthcare leaders are rethinking how they engage patients and providers with new approaches to media and support that are much more personal and infinitely more human.
Revising The Journey- The average patient journey diagram once looked
something like a baseball diamond—four or five predictable steps representing a real life that is anything but.
Read more about these two 2018 trends and many more by downloading the reports here.
