Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Roundtrip’s services have evolved to reach even more areas of the health care industry, beyond its core service coordinating transportation for non-emergency medical visits.
Since their product’s launch in 2017, Richmond-based Roundtrip has been working with hospitals, health systems, health care plans and paratransit organizations to arrange rides for people getting to and from medical appointments, such as routine surgeries or other non-emergency visits. Locally, they have worked with VCU Health, Bon Secours, GRTC and the counties of Chesterfield and Hanover to transport Richmonders to and from these appointments.
To coordinate these rides, Roundtrip acts as a mediator between transportation companies and care managers who are, for example, needing to get a patient who does not have other transportation to an appointment. Often, these rides are covered under insurance plans. For those without coverage, organizations like GRTC and other paratransit companies offer benefits for subsidized transport under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A national partnership with Lyft has even allowed Roundtrip to introduce ride-sharing into the health system.
In May 2019, Roundtrip closed on a $5.14 million Series A funding round that went toward upgrading software and building out their expanding departments. The company now consists of nearly 45 team members and operates in around 30 markets across the country.
“Transportation is such a disparate type of topic for a lot of organizations,” Roundtrip CTO Ankit Mathur told Inno. “In health systems before, care managers would have to identify that transportation was a need for a particular patient and then go around and call various parties to coordinate transportation through insurance systems, which often causes delays in care. What we've done is create a platform that eliminates all of the phone calls and all of the different disparate systems and also acts as a place to schedule and monitor rides and while providing valuable data back to the health system about their transportation needs and demographics.”
As the health care world has been plunged into chaos due to the pandemic, non-emergency appointments are being postponed and Roundtrip has been contacted more and more as a way for healthcare facilities to coordinate the rides of their employees. The integration of a platform they are already familiar with, combined with the possibility of getting essential workers to their health care jobs without the use of public transport or other shared transportation seemed to be the perfect pivot during these times.
“We're starting to see that employee transportation for health systems is a growing need,” Mathur said. “We're also transporting patients that need to go to COVID screenings and we're helping facilitate the discharging of a lot of non-COVID patients to improve the overall patient flow capacity. We’ve even set up food delivery for patients that had tested positive and were self-isolating. It’s very interesting to see these things that our partners are reaching out to us about as their needs evolve. We're certainly trying to adapt as much as possible to meet the needs of our community."
Coordinating transfers for patients leaving the hospital in order to free up precious bed space during the public health crisis seems critical in a time of hospital bed shortages around the country. In a blog post outlining ways their services could be utilized amid the pandemic, the startup also emphasize the role it could play in working alongside health systems to transfer patients to COVID-19 testing sites.
Mathur also stressed that the health and safety of those being transported and those working in transportation is prioritized above all else. Roundtrip has focused on working with their near 400 medical partners to ensure that all CDC-recommended guidelines for protection and cleanliness are being followed. For now, as elective medical procedures get put on the back burner, Roundtrip has stepped up to fulfill their role in the health crisis wherever they can.
“I don't know if life will go back to exactly the same, but I think we'll all come out of this with a different mindset about our public health,” said Mathur.
