September 17, 2020
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak with Imran Cronk, Founder and CEO of Ride Health. Below is some information about Ride Health that aligns with the OASAS SOR RFP.
Please note that this is an attempt to share potentially useful information with NYS Council members and colleagues. The NYS Council does not ‘endorse’ vendors or products.
Here is Imran’s contact information:
Imran Cronk
Founder and CEO
p: 336.813.5007
Regarding Ride Health as it aligns with the OASAS SOR RFP: In order to assure 24 / 7 / 365 access to services across the network for individuals in [Region], [Network] will implement Ride Health as a core component of its network design. Ride Health is an on-demand transportation coordination platform that works with healthcare providers, health plans and community-based organizations nationwide — from its headquarters in New York State — to design clinically-aware mobility programs that ensure access to care and social resources for vulnerable populations, including those engaged in behavioral health and substance abuse treatment and recovery.
Within a dedicated instance of Ride Health, care managers across [Network] will create Passenger Profiles that capture demographic information, home and facility locations, mobility and accessibility needs, and communication preferences. Importantly, Ride Health does not assume that every individual has a smartphone, lives in an urban area, can ambulate without support and speaks English as a first language. Rather, Ride Health matches individuals with the right transportation based on a nuanced understanding of their needs.
Rides can be one-way, round-trip, multi-stop or recurring and can be either on-demand for same-day needs or scheduled in advance. When a ride is arranged, the passenger profile and trip request information is used to ensure that only transportation providers who can fulfill the ride receive an offer. The platform provides real-time visibility into the automated scheduling process as offers are made and provides continuous updates until an offer is accepted. Ride Health notifies users in a timely manner on the rare occasion that a ride cannot be fulfilled and marks the ride with an ‘Unavailable’ status and notifies the requesting user. Ride Health’s approach to network design has resulted in less than 0.2% of trip requests ending in an ‘Unavailable’ status.
Because Ride Health integrates with each transportation provider’s dispatch system, ride status information is captured and shared in real-time across the coordinator-facing web portal and individual-facing SMS / phone call updates: when a driver is dispatched to the pick-up location, when the driver arrives at the pickup location, upon passenger pick-up, and when the ride is completed.
Ride Health has an in-house support system combining automated triage of notifications flagging potential disruptions with direct platform integration to enable real-time interventions at scale. These notifications flag potential issues ranging from fraud, waste, and abuse to difficulties connecting an individual with a driver. The improved response time from this technology-enabled approach to proactive ride support enables a meaningful reduction in delays and complaints. Ride Health doesn’t wait to be called for assistance – over 65% of calls are placed outbound from the Ride Success team.
Ride Health manages a comprehensive network of credentialed transportation providers to cover curb-to-curb, door-to-door, door-through, wheelchair-accessible vehicle, stretcher van and non-emergency ambulance levels of service. Ride Health’s partners include national Transportation Network Companies (TNCs), including Uber Health, Lyft, Via, Curb Mobility, and Arro. These core TNCs are supplemented by access to non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers, enabled by Ride Health’s standard integrations with their existing dispatch systems, including RoutingBox, MediRoutes, WellRyde, FastTrak, CTS TripMaster and TraumaSoft.
Ride Health has a multi-stage network development process that occurs during implementation with each new program, since what works in [one area] will not necessarily work in [another area] but access must be consistent across all parts of the [region].
- The process starts with gaining an understanding of transportation needs by county, vehicle type, service level, and volume to source transportation providers.
- Transportation providers must meet federal, state and local requirements, background checks, vehicle safety certifications and — where required based on the service level — special training requirements and alcohol and drug screenings.
- Ride Health will negotiate fee schedules during contracting, as well as expected performance standards and response times.
- Ride Health allows transportation providers to remain in their system of record for ride coordination, fulfillment, and navigation by directly integrating with their dispatch systems.
- Ride Health integrates with a transportation provider’s dispatch system to ensure seamless ride scheduling, status updates and communications.
- After a thorough dispatch testing process, transportation provider fleets are migrated into Ride Health’s production Fleet Engine and enabled for trip offers.
Ride Health maintains a zip code-level understanding of scheduling confidence across TNC (ride-hailing) networks. In addition to being used to develop a supplemental network covering all identified gaps in TNC availability, requested rides are automatically sent to alternate providers when appropriate to avoid failed rides or stranded individuals. This process allows users to schedule rides without concern for the nuances of TNC availability in suburban and rural areas. Maintaining this diverse network of transportation providers, inclusive of TNCs but not entirely dependent on them, becomes more important as regulatory requirements and risks for TNCs evolve.
Ride Health can enable decentralized access to ride coordinators across appropriate [Network] entities while maintaining centralized cost control and utilization management logic. Users in the Ride Health platform can be grouped into Teams, which allows the segmentation of front-end ride display and back-end reporting. Each Team can be associated with an individual Funding Source, which may have a set funding limit by month, year, or fixed pool.
In addition to assigning Funding Sources to groups of users, the platform’s roster management engine supports setting ride or monetary allotments for rider-level utilization controls. Additional utilization controls include limits on ride distance, duration, destination, or purpose. Ride Health manages transportation provider payments on behalf of healthcare organizations and delivers a consolidated invoice for services rendered on a monthly basis. Each invoice is segmented based on Funding Sources identified during implementation, including grant resources.
Ride Health offers reporting dashboards, self-serve CSV export, and data warehouse integration for convenient access to ride data and performance metrics. The platform’s direct dispatch system integrations enable the consistent capture of discrete data every transportation mode, including: timestamps (dispatch, driver arrival, pickup, drop-off), pickup / drop-off locations (name, address, county, coordinates), ride costs (total, loading, mileage, admin, cancellation), fulfilling fleet, vehicle type, service level, vehicle (make, model, color, license number), driver name, member rating, and member feedback.
Including Ride Health in the network design will allow [Network] to assure 24 / 7 / 365 access to services, including urgent and same-day access, for individuals in a manner that recognizes and accommodates linguistic, cultural, psychosocial and geographic (i.e. rural vs. urban) nuances within [Region].