Improve patient outcomes with better transportation

Feedback from the client

“With Redox, we can ensure access to information across myriad IT systems used to deliver and document care to get a comprehensive view of a patient and to ensure their high-quality healthcare journey.”

Mark Switaj,
CEO, Roundtrip

Roundtrip success story

Essential in the patient’s healthcare journey is the deceptively simple act of getting to their appointment. However, 10,000 patients miss or delay their care every day because they lack the necessary transportation. And every day, health care professionals spend hours coordinating transportation for their patients. Hospital no-show rates average 18%. In all, the transportation problem costs the healthcare industry $150 billion annually.

Roundtrip is driving better health outcomes with an integrated transportation solution. Roundtrip provides healthcare professionals with online and mobile tools that make ordering patient rides simple.

By partnering with Redox, Roundtrip helps care coordinators book rides 20 times faster—in 1.5 minutes instead of 20. Hospital no-show rates drop to 3% and they eliminate bottlenecks in the hospital caused by transportation delays. Roundtrip’s national partnership with Lyft helps hospitals switch from taxis and reduce costs by up to 45%. Integration powered by Redox gives healthcare organizations unprecedented access to data about transportation across all care settings and facilities, so they can continually improve upon efficiency, cost, and experience.

With customers in 25 states and transportation partners in 43, Roundtrip has already completed more than 100,000 trips and anticipates greater growth as more health insurers and Medicare Advantage plans include transportation benefits for their members.

The problem: Transportation is a fundamental barrier to care

Roundtrip’s mission is to eliminate transportation as a barrier to care by providing the best possible rides for patients through the simplest coordination imaginable. Through their digital transportation marketplace, Roundtrip connects patients with non-emergency medical transportation exactly when and where they need it.

Every day, 10,000 patients in the U.S. miss or delay care simply because they don’t have a ride. That’s 3.6 million people each year who don’t receive the care they need. Their conditions often escalate, increasing their likelihood of going to the emergency room or calling 911. This fundamental barrier to care hurts not only patients, but also clinicians, health care organizations, and health plans.

When a patient who doesn’t have a smartphone or access to public transit needs medical transportation, it’s up to their care coordinator, social worker or discharge nurse to schedule it. On average, staff spend 20 minutes per patient scheduling non-emergent rides. That’s at least 17 hours every month of phone calls just to book the level of transportation their patients require—whether it’s rideshare (Lyft), medical sedan, wheelchair van, or stretcher vehicle. Outside apps for rideshare and NEMT can help, but they add more steps to the process, create room for user error, are not HIPPA compliant, and don’t integrate with EMRs.

Hospitals face no-show rates of 18% on average (and as high as 40%), at an average cost of $355 per missed appointment. With nearly half of all patients needing transportation, patient flow slows down drastically. Once the patient’s ride is booked, even more, administrative hours are spent handling paperwork and taxi vouchers. With little control or communication about the driver’s arrival time and limited access to data about the patient’s experience, it’s nearly impossible to report on ‘on-time’ performance and improve transportation inefficiencies.

This fundamental barrier to care costs the healthcare system $150 billion annually.

How Roundtrip helps

To eliminate the transportation barrier to care, Roundtrip developed a solution for care coordinators to easily book the kind of rides their patients need, when they need them. Health plans and transit authorities can even give patients the benefit of booking their own medical rides on-demand using Roundtrip’s app or 24/7 navigation center.

It’s a simple, three-step process:

1. The trip requestor orders a ride, choosing the type of travel and vehicle needed

2. Transportation companies, vetted by Roundtrip, bid on an ETA

3. The trip occurs and performance data is collected

What once took 20 minutes or more—including several phone calls, paper vouchers, and payer authorization—can now be done in 90 seconds, using a single sign-on directly within the EMR. Clinicians are allowed to focus on patient care instead of waiting on the phone with a transportation company or faxing medical necessity paperwork.

Hospitals that use Roundtrip reduce their no-show rates from 18% to 3%, and reduce transportation costs by 40%. The 3-step workflow eliminates bottlenecks, improving patient throughput and reducing errors in data entry. Roundtrip simplifies the extra coordination it takes to communicate with the driver, the patient, and the payer.

EMR and CAD integration improves data visibility, communication, efficiency

Integration into both EMR and CAD (computer-aided dispatch) software is essential:

• Eliminates double documentation and reduces errors;

• Communicates with dispatch software to share driver location with the patient and provider from beginning to end of the trip;

• Authorizes payments by Medicaid, Medicare, and other ride brokers without any extra steps;

• Captures hidden data points to understand gaps in ambulance, wheelchair, and medical sedan services.

Above all, integration allows care coordinators and clinicians to operate at the top of their license, so they can do what they do best: care for their patients.

Redox partnership means Roundtrip dedicates resources to workflows, implementation

To help healthcare organizations go live with Roundtrip quickly, Roundtrip directs implementation resources toward workflows, relying on Redox to establish and maintain the necessary integrations.

With customers in 25 states already, and transportation partners in 43 states, Roundtrip relies on Redox integrations to get their partners online quickly. More than 100,000 rides have already been completed using Roundtrip. And as more health insurers and Medicare Advantage plans will offer transportation benefits to their members in 2020, Roundtrip expects demand to increase.

Integration made possible with Redox:

• Bidirectional, real-time data exchange over any ONC-approved format (including HL7, FHIR, C-CDAs, vendor APIs)

• Integrate information into 40+ EHRs and other health data sources

These integrations are crucial for Roundtrip to correlate a patient’s ride data with improved health outcomes, giving hospitals visibility into the role of transportation in helping patients get healthy, avoid readmissions, and manage chronic conditions.

An increasing number of health insurers and Medicare Advantage plans will offer transportation benefits to their members in 2020 (33% of the 3,148 Medicare Advantage plans, as compared to 22% in 2019). Roundtrip, with integrations powered by Redox, is ready to meet the increasing demand for its platform that is fueled by the growth in value-based care and the growing retiree population.