Nonemergency medical transportation is an industry that’s hardly ever stress-free: Nonemergency medical trips constitute 50 percent of all medical transportation in the country, yet the people who rely on these rides, including the elderly, sick and disabled, are often left stranded because of shoddy transportation logistics.
That’s where RoundTrip comes in.
The Philadelphia-based startup recently launched a platform to simplify the nonemergency transportation space, an arena that rakes in about $13 billion in annual revenue. The platform targets the medical transportation services booked by care coordinators, those who move patients between healthcare facilities, from a healthcare facility to another location, and from another location to a facility via transportation companies. (Disclosure: RoundTrip was a finalist in Philadelphia magazine’s The Pitch competition presented by UnitedHealthcare.)
In Philadelphia alone, more than 40 different nonemergency transportation companies collectively provide more than 1 million rides annually, the new company says, but right now there’s an oversupply of providers and no easy way to connect hospitals in need of transportation with providers that have additional capacity.
“RoundTrip was created to solve a real-world problem that every hospital faces,” said founder and CEO Mark Switaj in a statement. “More than 3.6 million doctors visits are missed or delayed each year due to transportation issues.”
Switaj founded Roundtrip at the beginning of 2016 after 15 years in various roles in the patient transportation field, including EMT. His co-leaders, Ankit-Mathur and Angela Damiano, with experience in software product development and financial analytics between them, will serve as the company’s chief information officer and corporate administrator, respectively.
Through RoundTrip’s web-based portal for care coordinators, users can enter patient information, see estimated patient arrival and departure times, and electronically book transportation requests. With the mobile app, drivers can accept requests and receive real-time feedback while being connected to the unit secretaries, social workers, and nurses who request their services.
It may be easy to call RoundTrip the Uber of medical transportation, but it’s not that simple. Roundtrip’s model is B2B — it connects care coordinators with transportation providers, so right now, patients are not responsible for arranging their rides.
Roundtrip charges a flat rate per ride and can adapt to multiple payer sources, including insurers, hospitals, patients and family members. The company may also generate revenue through a brokerage fee charged to the transportation provider for each referred transport.