How do you get to the doctor’s office? If you think it's as simple as calling an Uber, the reality for many people is much more complicated.
Limited public transit options, health conditions that make driving difficult and economic barriers are just a few of the factors that can impact a person's ability to access healthcare. Coordinating transportation is also a challenge for healthcare providers, as many medical transportation brokers have struggled to modernize their tech and processes.
It’s a logistical nightmare, to say the least, but Chicago startup Kaizen Health is working to change that. The startup partners with healthcare providers, senior living centers, in-home healthcare providers and other similar facilities to make it easier to schedule patient transportation.
“We aggregate disparate transportation providers in a programmatic way,” said CEO Mindi Knebel. “We partner with Lyft — we were the first to partner with them in the healthcare space — and augment that with taxis and other medical transportation companies.”
Kaizen Health is designed to be easy for providers to use and an invisible component of the patient experience. The company’s HIPAA-compliant platform is browser-based, although it can be integrated with electronic health record software and care coordinator platforms. Transportation is selected during the appointment-scheduling process, enabling care coordinators to browse from a fleet of cars, small buses, non-emergency medical vehicles and wheelchair accessible vehicles.
We can go curb-to-curb, door-to-door, door-through-door and bed-to-bed so that we can accommodate everyone.”
Patients receive a reminder 24 hours before their appointment and are given information on their ride via text, phone or their medical provider’s app a few minutes prior to pickup.
“We can go curb-to-curb, door-to-door, door-through-door and bed-to-bed so that we can accommodate everyone,” Knebel said. “We’ve brought together disparate transportation providers under one platform so that our clients only have one place to go to take care of all of their patients.”
The Transit Cooperative Research Program, a research arm of the Federal Transit Administration, estimates that non-emergency medical transportation spending is at $3 billion annually. While there’s certainly a market opportunity, Knebel launched Kaizen Health for more personal reasons.
Her aunt was forced to move into a nursing home after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 53 because she was unable to arrange transportation to her physical therapy appointments. About a month later, Knebels’ mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed family help to ensure she made her medical appointments.
“My mother-in-law had all the resources a person would hope to have, but during treatment she couldn’t drive and depended on family to get back and forth to her appointments,” said Knebel. “Not everyone has a support system or good options. It really opened up my eyes to the problem.” said Knebel.
While Kaizen Health is currently focused on transportation, Knebel said the startup’s long-term goal is to address logistical challenges across all the social determinants of health, an umbrella term for the various economic and social conditions that impact healthcare. Food and isolation are the next two determinants the company will address, Knebel said. In the near-term, Kaizen Health will launch in 15 to 30 new markets this year.
