Overview
The client is one of the five largest, nonprofit Catholic health systems in the country, and the largest private provider in Ireland. The system owns 48 hospitals across seven states and consists of 60,000 associates, including 2,100 physicians and advanced practice clinicians. Its mission is to extend the compassionate ministry of Jesus by improving the health and well-being of its communities and bringing good help to those in need, especially people who are poor, dying, and underserved.
Challenge
The rich legacy of the client reaches back nearly 200 years. Today, it’s a modern healthcare system that continues to grow in size, number, services, and patients served. As healthcare has become more sophisticated, requiring cutting-edge medical expertise and resources for treatment, so too is the need for reliable, and cost-effective transportation services for patients.
Prior to Roundtrip, the health system was burdened with a cumbersome taxi voucher system that required rides to be booked over the phone, providing no data and eating up hours of time from care coordinators. When the ride would arrive, the voucher would need to be filled out for the patient and delivered to the taxi driver. The taxi company would then scan the vouchers and fax them to the hospital which required many administrative hours to sort through.
“When I was working with the cab company, you would call initially then call back again and get availability and then add demographics for the patient, then ask for the ride to be approved internally. Then you had to check on the ride. A lot of time on the phone, on hold.”
Taxi vouchers also proved to be costly: the average cost of a 13-mile taxi ride in Richmond, Virginia is $52.25, amounting to expensive invoices for less than ideal results. With this system in place, the client was left with a cumbersome transportation workflow that was ultimately costly to the organization.
Impact
In August 2018, the health system launched with Roundtrip to provide a better option for their patients. Today, nearly 500 ride requesters across four different hospitals in the Richmond area rely on Roundtrip to coordinate and schedule rides.
For the care coordinators at the health system, Roundtrip eliminates the need for taxi vouchers through a digital solution, providing greater efficiency, and better cost-effectiveness. Now that care coordinators can simply arrange transportation online, they are no longer held back booking rides over the phone, and the hours spent performing administrative tasks to secure patient transportation. The most common feedback we hear from the care coordinators is how much they love the online-booking option because of the time it has given back to caring for patients:
“Faxing and approving one trip tied up a lot of my time – sometimes, given that someone would answer the phone – that would be an hour and 45 minutes. In the time it took to coordinate one ride with the cab service, – I could have called for 3 appointments or I could have faxed 3 patient records or asked for imaging results. Now, I can focus on all the other moving parts of my job.”
– Oncology Nurse Navigator
“When I’m on the phone, I can only work on one patient at a time. Because of Roundtrip, I can make more follow up calls to my patients and make sure they’re doing well. I work with a lot of patients coming out of the hospital that have complex case management. It can be very overwhelming for them, Roundtrip helps make sure that I am here to help.”
– NICU Nurse Navigator
With Roundtrip, care coordinators can now voicelessly schedule any type of ride through an on-demand transportation network, automatically logging the ride details in Roundtrip’s digital platform. The number of follow-up calls is now reduced to a minimum and handled by Roundtrip’s Navigation center to proactively remedy missed connections.
And as for cost savings, in the first month of using Roundtrip, the health system completed 122 rideshare rides, averaging 13 miles per trip at $22.79 per ride. With Roundtrip, the client has projected savings of 44% using rideshare instead of taxis. And to ensure that resources are being allocated in the best way, the client receives multiple invoices broken out by cost center so that administrators can easily track and determine how much of the transportation budget each department utilizes.
Due to this successful launch, the client expanded with Roundtrip to provide transportation for therapy appointments in October 2018, and to its mobile clinic unit in December of 2018. To date, we have completed nearly 6,000 rides and we look forward to future expansion opportunities with the health system.
