By Michael Scaturro, KFF Health News (TNS)
When Lyft driver Tramaine Carr transports seniors and sick patients to hospitals in Atlanta, she feels like both a friend and a social worker.
“When the ride is an hour or an hour and a half of mostly freeway driving, people tend to tell you what they’re going through,” she said.
Drivers such as Carr have become a critical part of the medical transportation system in Georgia, as well as in Washington, D.C., Mississippi, Arizona, and elsewhere. While some patients use transportation companies solely dedicated to medical rides or nonemergency ambulance rides to get to their appointments, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft are also ferrying people to emergency rooms, kidney dialysis, cancer care, physical therapy and other medical visits.
But Georgia ride-hail drivers aren’t only serving patients living in Atlanta or its sprawling suburbs. When rural Georgians are too sick to drive themselves, Uber or Lyft is often one of the only ways to reach medical care in the state capital.
Rural hospital closures in Georgia have meant people battling cancer and other serious illnesses must now commute two or more hours to treatment facilities in Atlanta, said Bryan Miller, director of psychosocial support services at the Atlanta Cancer Care Foundation, a medical practice offshoot that seeks to alleviate financial burdens for cancer patients and their families.
From April 2022 to April 2024, Lyft drivers completed thousands of rides that were greater than 50 miles each way and that began or ended at Atlanta-area medical treatment centers, including the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and Emory University Hospital Midtown, according to Lyft.
While 75% of those trips were under 100 miles, the company said, 21% of them were between 100 and 200 miles and 4% were over 200, showing that even Georgians who live hours away from metro Atlanta rely on the ride-hail platform to reach medical care there.
Uber Health global head Zachary Clark declined to provide comparable ridership data. Uber Health is a division of Uber that organizes medical transportation for some Medicaid and Medicare recipients, health care workers, prescription drug delivery, and others seeking reimbursement for medical-related Uber rides, according to Uber’s website.
Lyft also has a health care division, offering programs such as Lyft Assisted and Lyft Concierge to coordinate rides for patients.
Nationwide, some insurance companies and cancer treatment centers, plus Medicare Advantage and state Medicaid plans, pay for such ride-hailing services, often with the goal of reducing missed appointments, according to Krisda Chaiyachati, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania medical school.
In 2024, 36% of individual Medicare Advantage plans and 88% of special needs plans offered transportation services, said Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, associate director of Medicare policy at KFF, the health policy research, polling, and news organization that includes KFF Health News. A special needs plan provides extra benefits to Medicare recipients who have severe and chronic diseases or certain other health care needs, or who also have Medicaid.
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Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
