Hello, everyone. This is Erica Spicer Mason with
Becker's Healthcare. Thank you so much for tuning
into the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
So today we're going to talk about the
importance and the value of non emergency medical
transportation.
And joining me for this conversation is Alan
Murray, the president and CEO of MetaDrive.
Alan, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so
much for joining Becker's today. No. Thank you
for having me. It's a real pleasure. I
appreciate it.
We're thrilled to have you, and I'm really
excited to talk
about this this topic, you know, non emergency
medical transportation and what that means from an
access standpoint and organizational and business standpoint. But
before we get into the meat of the
conversation, wanted to give you the opportunity to
share a little bit more about yourself and
your work in health care. Yeah. Thank you,
Erica. Yeah. It's,
it's been quite the journey for me personally.
I actually came over to The US
in 2000 and,
'2.
So, you know, I've been here a long
time, and that entire time, I've been in
the health care industry. I actually started at
Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield,
way back then,
and had progressed through a number of other
similar count companies, including UnitedHealthcare
and actually was part of starting,
a brand new health insurance company,
with Northwell Health called Care Connect.
I then went back to Empire Blue Cross
Blue Shield for five years as their president
and CEO.
And, Erica, as part of that journey,
I really started to understand a lot more
about how people
access health care, in this country, which, by
the way, has a phenomenal
health care system compared to where I grew
up in The UK.
But it's not necessarily
coordinated. Right? And access can be a problem
if you don't have the means.
And so one of the things that I
became very aware of
was this issue of nonemergency medical transportation.
And while, Erica,
it is out there as, you know,
our understood
benefit in the Medicaid space and even in
the Medicare space.
It's pretty underutilized.
And even when it is utilized,
there's a lot of missed strides. There's a
lot of confusion. There's a lot of issues
with that benefit.
And so
as I started to see where opportunities were
for improvement,
I actually joined
with some transportation
experts,
and we created many drive, which for from
my perspective,
is the future
of non emergency medical transportation.
And
what I'm really trying to do with Medi
Drive is to improve the health and wellness
of all Americans
by really compassionately
transporting them on the road to better health.
Alan, so great to learn more about you,
your background,
and and just more about what, you know,
the kind of the basis of Medidrive, what
inspired it. And it sounds like we both
have some similarities in our our work in
health care. I also come from a payer
organization
in a past role, and,
I've seen firsthand some of these coordination barriers
that you're talking about when it comes to
medical transportation
and and also how sometimes there's often a
lack of awareness on the member standpoint. So
a lot we could probably go into. I
won't get up on our conversation,
but,
yeah, just wanted to acknowledge that I I've
certainly seen that firsthand as well.
And I wanted to go a little bit
deeper
in this area.
You know, we know that research shows that
about one in five US adults actually forego
medical care completely because of transportation barriers,
which is a really significant
number of folks in the country. So from
your perspective, you know, what is the role
of non emergency medical transportation here, not just
for patient access and better outcomes, but also
supporting health care organizations goals more broadly?
Yeah. Erica, it's kinda crazy when you think,
about that stat. Right? One in five US
adults
don't get the Medicaid medical care because of
transportation. And I mean, we all know one
in five. It's twenty percent
of people are foregoing medical care.
You know, and if we think about that,
that doesn't mean that they don't need medical
care. Right? It's not like they they weren't
feeling well. They woke up, and they decided
not to go. What ends up happening
is further down the road, the issues that
they're having medically
or from a behavioral health perspective can potentially
get a lot worse. They can show up
in emergency rooms. They can get readmitted and
so forth. So
nonemergency medical transportation
is a real part of the social determinants
of health. Right? And it's the ability
not only to get people to care,
but to ensure that it's on a continuous
as part of a continuous course of treatment.
Right? Take, for example, chronic kidney disease.
Right? If if you have to go to
dialysis, if you have to go to your
endocrinologist,
you're going potentially
several times a week.
If you don't make it to that dialysis,
your health is gonna be materially impacted,
and is going to not only
impact your your life and and your longevity
potentially,
but it's actually gonna cost the health care
system a lot more. And we already know
how expensive
The US health care system is compared to
other health care systems across the world.
And so from my perspective,
the role nonemergency
medical transportation plays is the ability to be
reliable
in the space that it that people need
in order to continue
a course of treatment, a care journey,
either to its conclusion
or in a continuous manner.
So it's really about connecting people to care.
And the other thing, Erica, which I think
is really important is it's not just
the patient. Right? It's not just the patient
being picked up and being dropped off.
What's also really important
is
the rest
of that cycle and those who are involved.
So making sure the health plan is aware
that transportation is occurring.
Having insight and providing,
transparency
to the health care provider.
Hey. This patient is is gonna have transportation.
They've been picked up. They're on their way.
They need they need help once they get
there. They have a walker or a wheelchair.
And even their loved ones or their caregivers
or their care managers at a payer, knowing
what is going on
real time
in this part of the care journey. It's
absolutely essential,
but it hasn't necessarily
happened to date in a truly integrated manner.
Such great points, Alan.
As you were kind of describing this need
for,
non non emergency medical transportation
as part of a continuous course of treatment.
It sounds like your approach and MetaDrive's approach
is really kind of zooming out and looking
at this holistically. Where does transportation
fit in at various
touch points,
between the patient and their health care journey?
Yeah. And I imagine, you know, you mentioned
that there hasn't been a lot of,
real time capabilities in terms of all stakeholders
in that continuum knowing when transportation is needed,
when it's happening.
So can you just share a little bit
more about what can be done to close
some of those information gaps that systems might
be experiencing when it comes to integrating the
service,
especially to ensure that all stakeholders are able
to track what's going on with the patient's
journey?
Yeah, Erica. It it's really interesting because,
you know, as I looked
to become part of Medidrive and to really
make it all it can be,
the very first thing that,
I saw was partners that understood
transportation.
And so I actually partnered with a couple
of individuals who run a company called CTG.
It stands for corporate transportation group. And they've
been in the business for over forty years,
doing corporate transportation, you know, black cars, but
also paratransit,
which is obviously for large municipalities
getting people to and from their intended places
and if they can't get on a bus
or other public transportation.
When I when I joined with them, the
combination
of my health care experience and their transportation
experience
really allowed us to approach nonemergency
medical transportation in a completely different way. Right?
So first and foremost,
nonemergency
medical transportation
is about the driver, is about routing, is
about dispatching.
It's about having all the vehicles ready, making
sure those vehicles are compliant, that they're the
the drivers
have been credentialed, that they know how to
if he gets a wheelchair vehicle, they know
how to operate wheelchairs.
But then the flip side of that on
the health care side is fitting that in
to the
vertical,
care systems
that health care has.
And so that's obviously being able to provide
health plans, Medicaid, and Medicare plans where applicable
with all the tools that they need
so that their care managers, their call centers,
their procurement team, their finance team can all
monitor what's happening.
We also then layered in, as I mentioned
before, this
provider concept where we also have a tool
called the,
the medi drive,
transportation management system
that a provider can load within ten minutes
up and running, and they can use that
system to manage
all their own transportation
as well as any transportation
that we have, that we are the broker
with a health plan.
So when you combine all that together, you're
really delivering on an incredible care continuum,
which can even include integrating with,
EMRs,
peer eligibility
systems.
And ultimately, we do all that while communicating
across the continuum.
Erica, we even communicate in almost any language.
And I'll give you I'll give you an
example.
We have one,
provider customer who before
we partnered with them, they had a twenty
three percent no show rate. So twenty three
percent of the time, their patients didn't show
up. After we started working with them, within
six months, that number dropped to eleven percent.
So think about the impact that has on
people's health
and the impact it has to that particular
provider ensuring they're getting those patients in and
and are seeing them appropriately.
Such a great example. Thank you for sharing,
Alan.
As you were describing
how MetaDrive is leveraging these various layers of
expertise,
including all of these stakeholders, I'm kind of
envisioning this as a a big orchestration
of Yeah. Technology and processes in the background
to really make this seamless,
for the patient and for providers as well,
which is very important. Yep.
And, of course, payers in addition to that.
So this is fantastic. And as you look
ahead,
you know, I know the technology landscape is
changing. Patient needs
are changing, and health systems and pairs alike
are, of course, prioritizing
the social determinants of health and health equity
as we as we move forward.
So how do you in in this space,
how do you see the non emergency medical
transportation landscape changing at the same time, especially
as we're seeing more folks invest in care
coordination and value based models?
Yeah. Erica, it's a great question. And, you
know, if you'd asked me eighteen months ago,
two years ago about the space, I would
have said, I don't think there's a lot
of innovation.
You know, I think
nonemergency
medical transportation
brokers, vendors
are kind of interchangeable. You know, at the
end of the day, they provide a call
center.
They
broker rides, you know, sometimes three, four days
requirement in advance.
We get a lot of complaints about it
as a health plan.
It's not always reliable. And, you know, in
my mind, I thought, well, that's just the
industry. It is what it is.
But now that I've been in the industry,
it's incredibly exciting to see what is happening.
You know, if we think about it from
a machine learning artificial intelligence basis,
we have the ability to monitor all these
rides that are going on, you know, literally
millions of rides a year in real time.
We can show
to a care manager
exactly where a vehicle is in its journey
towards
the dialysis center.
Therefore, allowing that care manager to understand the
patient is on their way.
We have the ability, as I said earlier,
to communicate in almost any language. Right? So
that's with the text message, that's with our
app, or, you know, with the software development
kit to,
providers app or to a health plans app.
And I think what all this means is
we're using
this knowledge base of
health care and the way patients go about
their care journey,
transportation providers and the way that those individuals
and those companies need to,
you know, schedule and get through their day.
And we're combining it all with this platform
that links
all of the different incremental pieces,
even down to the point where
we've actually created a marketplace within our platform
that allows us at any point in time
to find the most affordable ride
and the closest ride. So that's almost like
an Expedia type thing that happens behind the
scene.
So the
the future of the NEMT is incredibly
bright,
assuming that
we can educate people on
exactly what that future
can look like versus the way it is
today.
It's a really exciting outlook, Alan, and I
appreciate you throughout this conversation highlighting not only
the importance of transportation when it comes to
care access, but also opportunities that organizations can
see from an efficiency standpoint
and better serving their members and have and
and ensuring that they're having a better experience
across that care journey.
So I feel like we could keep going
for a long in this conversation, but I
do wanna respect your time. And and just
for to close us out here, you know,
is there anything that you think maybe we
glossed over too quickly or any final thoughts
that you wanted to leave our listeners with?
Only a couple of things, Erica. I think
you had just actually mentioned it about efficiency.
One of the great things
that the approach that many drive has and
the technology and the platforms that we've created
is efficiency.
We are actually performing
30%
more efficient than what we believe,
some of the other competitors are because of
the way that we've designed,
and we go about the use of technology,
and, quite frankly, our transportation
know how.
That translates not only into a better product,
and a more reliable product, but it also
means if you're a health care payer or
you're a provider,
you can actually begin to look at reducing
costs when it comes to your transportation impact.
And I think that's really important as we
look at the cost of health care today
and the way it's the way that it's
actually delivered.
Health care costs are going up all the
time. Right? We we're at 18 plus percent
of GDP.
And ultimately, what I believe technology
needs to deliver as well as new entrants,
relatively new entrants into the market,
is we need to be able to show
that we can do it obviously better,
with a far greater reliability
and a and a better impact to the
patients and the other constituents.
But we have to do it at a
greater efficiency and pass on that financial benefit
to our customers
so that we can have an impact on
controlling
not just the cost of non emergency medical
transportation,
but I also think by showing that there's
an improvement in cost to the total cost
of care that individuals go through. And so
it's a combination of all of that, Erica,
that I believe Medi Drive delivers and
is the future of nonemergency medical transportation.
And, ultimately,
thank you so much for taking the time
and and asking me these awesome questions. It's
been a real pleasure.
Oh, Alan, it's been great having you with
Becker's today and for highlighting
really important points in nonemergency medical transportation and
what it means for care delivery. So thank
you, Alan, again, for making the time and
sharing your insights today. It's a pleasure. Thank
you.
And we'd also like to thank our podcast
sponsor for today, Meta Drive.
Listeners, be sure to tune in to more
podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast
page at beckershospitalreview.com.