Dec. 29, 2021
Uber is planning to offer greater on-demand access to the delivery of medications and the transportation of patients to healthcare providers, according to an article by Bruce Japsen in Forbes.
“In an interview Thursday at the 2021 Forbes Healthcare Summit, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber has been working ‘behind the scenes’ for the last five years ‘building out the tool sets’ and capabilities to help improve the healthcare experience of patients,” Japsen writes. He reports that the company has expanded its relationships with health insurers, healthcare provider systems and companies that work with drugstore chains on prescription delivery.
Khosrowshahi pointed as an example to Uber’s relationship with health insurer Centene, which can enroll Medicaid patients who have trouble gaining access to healthcare providers into programs that offer the care “pathway needed for patient care to be leveraged through Uber,” Khosrowshahi told Japsen.
Uber is building its services to keep patient’s private information secure in compliance with HIPAA guidelines, Japsen reports. Under the new services, information will be able to be exchanged between healthcare providers, insurers and Uber without patients having to worry about their private information getting breached.
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In addition, Uber also has a text-messaging service for those patients who don’t have the Uber app and has its services available in 20 different languages, according to Japsen.
“I do think that consumer expectations of everything on-demand in general are changing and the expectations of healthcare providers are changing as well,” Khosrowshahi told Japsen. “We have seen real innovations in healthcare. Medicare Advantage is allowing coverage of ancillary benefits like transportation, and the pandemic accelerating care delivery outside of traditional settings has come together into this perfect storm.”
