Uber Health is teaming up with Socially Determined, a social risk analytics and solutions company, the companies announced Monday. The partnership aims to support patients in need with supplemental benefits like transportation, food and prescription delivery.
San Francisco-based Uber Health is the healthcare arm of transportation company Uber. It offers non-emergency medical transportation, as well as grocery and prescription delivery. More than 3,000 healthcare organizations use the Uber Health platform. Washington D.C.-based Socially Determined offers a solution to help healthcare organizations (including health plans and health systems) understand where social risk exists and what they can do about it.
The new partnership supports Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and commercially insured patients. Uber Health and Socially Determined’s payer and provider customers will be able to leverage Socially Determined’s social risk data to identify which patients have barriers to accessing healthcare and what those barriers are. Then Uber Health will be able to offer its services to support those patients’ specific needs, whether it’s non-emergency medical transportation, same-day prescription delivery or grocery and over-the-counter item delivery.
The companies declined to share the financial terms of the partnership.
Uber Health launched its grocery and over-the-counter delivery services in June. In October, it also announced a partnership with Optum that allows some Medicare Advantage members to add health plan benefit cards issued by Optum’s payment platform as a form of payment in the Uber app. But before its partnership with Socially Determined, the responsibility was on the patient to access Uber’s services.
“Now with Socially Determined, we’re taking one step further where a patient doesn’t have to have accessed a doctor’s office,” said Caitlin Donovan, global head of Uber Health, in an interview. “They don’t have to have recognized that they need a benefit. This allows us to use data analytics to find those patients who may not raise their hand and say, ‘I need this.’”
On Socially Determined’s end, the company supports providers and payers with social risk analytics to help them identify patients in need of additional support. But partnering with Uber Health helps its customers take action on those needs, said Trenor Williams, co-founder and CEO at Socially Determined.
“[Uber Health] helps to answer the, ‘Now what?’ The ability to actually solve the problem. I know that somebody has a risk related to transportation. … They’re not able to get to [an appointment]. You’re now able to leverage that Uber Health benefit from a transportation standpoint. You can actually go all the way through the problem — not just identify it — but actually help mitigate that risk,” Williams said in an interview.
Williams underscored the value of expanding access to these benefits beyond Medicare and Medicaid patients. Commercially insured patients may also be at risk and require transportation or delivery support.
Looking forward, Donovan said she hopes the companies can create a “measurable impact” by identifying the patients in need of additional support and deploying the necessary services.
Photo: mikdam, Getty Images
