Lyft, the ride-sharing startup, has inked a deal with Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts-based Acuity Link, a medical transportation logistics management business, to give hospitals and other healthcare providers expanded options for patients’ non-emergency medical transportation.
Founded in 2015 by a team of emergency medical service and health care professionals, Acuity Link offers a HIPAA-compliant dashboard, which automates the process of ordering all levels of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT). The company’s digital platform can manage logistics for multiple transportation providers by levels of care and modes of transportation, and ensures contractual obligations are met by automating service level agreement compliance.
As part of the partnership, Acuity Link’s NEMT logistic management dashboard will now support Lyft’s ride-hailing functionality. “With the added capability of Lyft, Acuity Link’s software is now one of the nation’s leading all-inclusive NEMT platform for, all levels of care and modes of transportation, ranging from critical care ambulance transport to ambulatory patient transit – with Lyft as the final link to provide health care providers with ambulatory transportation solutions,” the company stated in a press release.
Patients being discharged from any health care provider who do not need special transportation accommodations will have the option to be discharged through the new service. Additionally, the integration of Lyft’s ridesharing network into the Acuity Link platform will allow medical care providers in any health care setting to schedule one-time or recurring non-emergency transportation for inbound or outbound patients.
“Prior to Acuity Link, many ambulatory patient transports were performed through a taxi voucher system, which historically has been poorly serviced, inefficient, non-transparent and costly to all stakeholders,” Alex Theoharidis, CEO of Acuity Link, said in a statement. “By adding Lyft ride share services to Acuity Link’s platform, we have become a true one-stop shop for non-emergency medical transportation, providing managed logistics for all modes of transportation into any health care setting.”
“Through our partnership with Acuity Link, we’re able to create a seamless option for medical providers to request affordable rides more quickly and efficiently for their facilities,” Gyre Renwick, VP of Lyft Business, said in a statement. “Together, Lyft and Acuity Link are providing an innovative solution to manage all levels of care. Because of this joint effort, we’re able to reach even more passengers to ensure they’re able to get to and from important medical appointments as we work to cut the health care transportation gap in half by 2020 and improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation.”
According to Acuity Link, health care facilities currently using its software solutions report seeing improvements in patient experience and a reduction in the time to book transport requests by nearly 75 percent.
