JUNE 28, 2018
PHILADELPHIA, PA
Roundtrip, a health tech startup, is launching the Roundtrip Community — an online marketplace that connects medical transportation providers to rides requested by health systems and health plans. As the first marketplace of its kind, the Roundtrip Community empowers a nationwide network of credentialed, qualified medical transportation providers to gain more access to available rides and serve patients efficiently.
The medical transportation industry is in desperate need of innovation.
Now, transportation providers that would have otherwise been operating in a distributed and isolated manner can leverage Roundtrip’s technology to seamlessly receive and respond to more ride requests without investing in costly alternatives.
The Roundtrip Community’s transportation network spans coast-to-coast with providers operating in over 23 states and 100 cities.
By 2020, the Roundtrip Community anticipates operations in 48 states with expansion into overseas markets, including single-payer health system countries.
Traditionally, the process to coordinate medical transportation has been phone-based, clunky, limited, and availability-driven rather than quality-driven. Care coordinators will call a list of transportation providers until a vehicle is located and available. The Roundtrip Community has changed this. It vastly improves booking efficiency by concurrently pushing ride requests out to a network of transportation providers that meet patient needs and operate in the service area.
With real-time, voiceless ride requests, transportation providers can expand access and maximize the efficiency of their fleet.
Similar to ridesharing models, medical transportation providers can now select and claim rides in real-time that can be accommodated by their fleet’s capacity and availability.
In addition to the efficiency, rides are communicated with complete, auditable information, maximizing operational efficiencies when it comes to payment reconciliation. The Roundtrip Community platform aggregates transportation requests and serves as the record keeper which allows Roundtrip to pay our vendors within 15 days of the previous month, and equipping transportation providers with the right information to be reimbursed by health plans.
In conjunction with the launch of the Roundtrip Community, Roundtrip has completed integrations with WellRyde and Trip Master by CTS Software. With these integrations, transportation providers will be able to voicelessly receive ride requests and seamlessly dispatch direct to vehicles through the Roundtrip Community, reducing the costly task of managing a call center and allowing for those dollars to be spent growing their transportation resources. This integration will not only offer more trip volume to providers but also provide additional trip transparency and data collection for every single trip.
The implications for this technology is staggering. It is responding to one of the top-cited challenges for patients and the third biggest barrier that causes missed appointments in America. Annual missed appointments persist as one of healthcare’s most baffling problems, and it comes with a big price tag.
Anantha Rao, COO & CTO of WellRyde remarks, “Missed appointments cost the US healthcare system more than $150 billion a year. A vast majority of health care appointments are less than satisfactory in terms of fast, streamlined experience for patients. The Roundtrip and WellRyde partnership bridges the transportation gap and vastly improves the rider experience.”
Roundtrip CIO, Ankit Mathur says, “With our recent integrations with NEMT and EMS dispatch software systems, the Roundtrip Community will be the first to digitally connect transportation providers and drivers, regardless of the dispatch software they choose to use, directly to rides available in their area.
This community of medical transportation providers helps hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, health plans, and others provide a more transparent transportation experience to patients in need. It’s certainly a game changer.”
While the Roundtrip Community is designed for medical transportation providers, this solution impacts people all along the care continuum: patients, transportation providers, care coordinators, and healthcare organizations as a whole.
Where data was once lost over the phone, the Roundtrip Community prioritizes data transparency and high-quality service.
Now, care coordinators can easily request a ride with near-instant access to accurate data on expected arrival times and locations as a vehicle is en-route. This increases their ability to manage the transportation needs of their patient population effectively.
This level of detail and data transparency has never previously been possible in healthcare transportation. The efficiency and information accuracy supported by the Roundtrip Community reduces the number of delayed/missed rides and gives patients and care coordinators an easy, secure, and reliable ride coordination process. With innovations like this, we are that much closer to making the patient journey a smoother one.