Podcast with Imran Cronk (Penn ’16) | Ride Health

The hot take: In this episode, Imran walks us through scaling a digital health startup to 25 states in just two years. A recent Penn undergrad, Imran is deeply connected to the Wharton Healthcare community, which has been extremely influential in his ability to scale Ride Health. Ride is tackling the access issue plaguing almost 4M Americans per year who are cannot reach their medical care.

Overview of Ride Health:

• Organizations pay Ride Health, a web-based platform, to coordinate transportation and access for their patient population
• Ride partners with 3rd party transportation providers…Ride pays the 3rd party and invoices the Organization…then there is a platform fee paid by the Org
• Org types: Health system, ACOs, Health Plans, and NGOs like American Cancer Society….clinical users include: care coordinators, social workers, nurse navigators, discharge workers
• 3rd party transportation providers: Uber, local non-emergency medical providers, stretcher vans, ambulances

Is transportation left out of the Access conversation?

• Yes, but that tide is changing. Transportation has been included at the Federal level for some time. Medicaid has had transportation as an assured benefit since the 1970’s
• Why is this important? Non-emergency medical transportation is a requirement for organizations to collect on Medicaid dollars
• Currently large brokerages run dial-a-ride services, but these are inefficient and unreliable

Tailwinds and Headwinds for the transportation business?

• Stroke of the pen risk: Medicaid funded rides are vulnerable because the government has indicated that in 2019 it make not make transportation a requirement for reimbursement
• Medicare Advantage opportunity: new rules from the Chronic Care Act, give Medicare Advantage plans the option to include non-emergency transportation in their supplemental benefits package
• Medical transportation companies are just starting to use cloud-based tools, which Ride Health plugs in to

The Ride Health origin story:

• Imran was volunteering a shift in the Emergency Department, and a 60 year-old patient told him his plan for getting home was walking 8 miles. Imran gave a stranger a ride home at midnight!
• Every year 3.6M Americans will miss or delay care due to transportation barriers
• Imran wrote about the issue …. got publications in The Atlantic, Stat News and Morning Consult … leaders in the space got in touch with him on starting something to solve this issue and create an ecosystem

Where is Ride Health today in terms of growth/stage/cycle:

• 2018 has seen tremendous growth …Ride is now in 25 states across the country giving several hundred rides per day
• 10 months ago (Q4 2017) , company was in just 4–5 states at a dozen rides per day
• More than 2x the team size…currently have 10 full-time employees, had 4 employees at the beginning of 2018
• Currently a seed stage company

What is the market demanding and what is Ride’s differentiator:

• Big differentiator is Ride’s pricing model: Price is the same regardless of the number of rides…much more of a program-based, consultative approach
• Other competitors: Collect a margin from each ride, and often the customer is paying for their own rides! Incentives not aligned.
• Ride views itself as an asset to reduce the no-shows and delayed-discharges, as well as improve patient satisfaction
• Upcoming feature is coordination of digital prior authorization: wheelchair accessible vehicle, stretcher van or ambulance getting covered by insurance
• For Ride health: Patient do not need to have smart-phones or use technology
• Most common use case: patients gets a call on their home phone, organized by care coordinator, and never needs to use technology. Patient can opt-in for SMS text or voice calls to landlines. Also patients without a mobile phone can use their system

How can MBAs get involved:

• May be looking to expand the team in Spring 2019, don’t currently have MBAs on the team (more of a function of pay-grade, probably!)
• MBA talent needed: strategy, maneuvering the policy landscape, understanding the relationship between Payer and Provider systems
• If you are into social determinants of health and show hustle in this space, get in touch with Imran

Wharton Healthcare community has helped Imran at each inflection point:

• Wharton Healthcare Knowledge Network (email listserve, sign up here) and the Healthcare Alumni Association have both been very helpful!
• First mentor and Advisor was Jeff Levitt, currently serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the Leonard Davis Institute (LDI)…LDI’s Director Dan Polsky has been tremendously helpful as well
• One of earliest investors and advisors was Samir Malik (WG ’13, Founder of 1DocWay, acquired by Genoa Healthcare…which was bought by United in Q3 2017)
• Bernie Zipprich (WG ’16) helped get Imran his first job out of college at Mt. Sinai