The 2020s - A Decade to Address SDOH

The transition of a year and decade creates a special reflection on the last twelve months and nostalgia for the past ten years. With this reminiscing, we find optimism for the future as resolutions are passed with the goal of improving one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.

With the emphasis on social determinants of health in healthcare, our diverse industry of technology and service providers have begun to unite with the objective of resolving in this new decade how our businesses can address the economic, environmental and social factors that impact health outcomes. While there is no single solution that will resolve all the problems at once the unity of the entire healthcare industry can make a significant impact on improving lives.

As we open this new decade critical work driven by health plans and care providers has already started to assist with housing, employment, education, food, and social well-being programs to address SDOH. However, as we look closer at the programs we find that transportation is a universal key to helping effectively execute these. From helping people travel in their search for adequate and convenient housing, to and from work and school, travel to family, community, sports and social activities, access to acquiring necessities from clothing and housewares to groceries and medicine - reliable transportation is a common thread for urban and rural communities that resources like public transportation cannot always address universally and equally. This places greater importance on the reliability and integrity of NEMT brokers and their partners as we all unite to resolve these issues in the next decade.

Payers and providers who are leading this progress are rapidly moving away from legacy NEMT brokers and investing in technology-forward organizations that can support their populations in this age of the on-demand economy. The new NEMT broker must cost-effectively improve the member experience, reduce the number of grievances, and react to member/patient needs in minutes not days. As the leading technology-forward NEMT broker, SafeRide Health has democratized the information around NEMT providing a new level of transparency into the costs, availability, and quality of non-emergency medical transportation.

The foundation of a technology-forward NEMT broker requires robust and secure technology to manage the silos of information - the person being served, real-time data about the rides (availability, costs, quality, and location), the GIS database identifying each unique location for each person being served, a secure API layer for seamless integration with other SDOH and medical technology platforms - and marrying all this disparate data together using a robust algorithm to calculate in a minute what legacy NEMT brokers spend days or hours trying to accomplish. With the support of technologically superior and economically manageable transportation, while seamlessly integrating with the current technology stack at the health plan and care provider level to reduce the number of platforms a member, patient or employee must access, we can support the vision of providing a secure single-screen view into one’s well-being at both a computer or mobile app level. This breakthrough allows us to bring new efficiencies and innovations into improving the current challenges in health care and implement new ideas to address the social determinants of health. The result, SafeRide Health has moved health care into a new era of efficient and affordable transportation options for current populations with the availability to expand it to others who have been typically left behind without an additional cost burden.

As your organization thinks about creating and implementing a program to address the social determinants of health consider implementing a technology-forward NEMT program as part of it. Transportation is frequently overlooked because the traditional costs required to support programs managed by legacy NEMT brokers have made it appear cost-prohibitive. SafeRide Health is changing that. Partnering with SafeRide will help turn a good idea into a great cost-effective and superior solution that will help your program realize a high level of success and improve the lives of those most in need of assistance.