Where We Started
MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper University Health System is bringing patients in the Greater Philadelphia and South Jersey area the most advanced cancer care. With comprehensive cancer services in Camden, Voorhees, and Willingboro, patients in those areas have access to MD Anderson’s proven treatment plans, specialized cancer expertise, customized treatment plans, a full range of supportive care services, and more clinical trials. However, cancer patients can’t get better if they don’t get to their chemotherapy, radiation, and rehabilitation appointments. Cited as the third most common barrier to care, transportation to and from appointments in a considerable problem.
That’s where Roundtrip comes in. We are solving medical transportation headaches for patients and facility staff alike. For MD Anderson Cooper, we recommended our software as a solution for streamlining the ride coordination process for social workers. In January 2017, MD Anderson Cooper launched with Roundtrip to expand access for patients, reduce care coordinator effort associated with scheduling rides, and minimize the financial burden of transportation on the facility and its patients.
Diagnosing Pain Points of Patient Transportation
Time. It’s something we could all use a little more of; just ask the care coordination team of social workers at MD Anderson Cooper. Before Roundtrip, the team spent up to 20 minutes on the phone scheduling a single ride for a patient. This often involved waiting on hold, repeating patient information every time a trip is booked, and reiterating the entire process to check on a trip’s status. With Roundtrip, social workers can now cut down ride scheduling times by up to 90% — taking the time to book from 20 minutes down to 60-90 seconds per ride.
Lisa McLaughlin, one of MD Anderson Cooper’s oncology social workers, credits Roundtrip with her professional survival and her sanity, enabling her to schedule 100 patient transport rides one recent month when the hospital was down one social worker. “Trying to do that [the old telephone-based way] would have been absolutely impossible,” McLaughlin said, and an obstacle to everything else she’s supposed to do in her job. “I’m not the transportation lady; I’m the social worker.”
The results go beyond ride-booking efficiency — the result of streamlined coordination of rides end-to-end dramatically improves the patient experience and, in turn, improves patient no-show rates.
Care Coordinators can now:
- Voicelessly schedule any type of ride for patients through a single platform
- Automatically log ride details and collect appropriate information about the reasons for the ride in a single place
- Automatically text patients reminders 24 hours and 30 min before each ride
- Improve patient flow through an on-demand transportation network
- Improve coordination across shifts of transportation coordinators
- Push approximately 80% of all rides to a payer other than the facility and process one invoice for all rides covered by the facility
Driving Results, Delivering Value
In less than a year, MD Anderson has on-boarded eight social workers/case managers to book recurring rides for over 75 different patients. Quickly after onboarding staff, MD Anderson Cooper lowered direct transportation costs by 30%. To date, we have delivered direct employee time savings of over $44,500 and have given care coordinators over 1,000 hours back. Nationally, the rates for patient no-shows and missed appointments are as high as 15-20%. Through Roundtrip’s coordination of transportation, MD Anderson Cooper patients that need a ride now have a no-show rate of just 4%. Specific to no-show related costs with MD Anderson Cooper, we have delivered cost savings of $22,000. Together, cost savings total to $66,500. In addition to the transparency across the transportation sequence, MD Anderson has been able to reduce the actual cost of facility-paid transportation, and the average cost of a sedan ride has been decreased by more than $7. Moving forward, Roundtrip will continue to serve MD Anderson patients has rolled out additional departments within the Cooper University Health System.
Learn more about how using Roundtrip can help save time and money.
