Private healthcare firm signs Uber deal for carers and patients

• This article replaces an earlier story that was based on an incorrect agency report.

A private healthcare provider has signed a deal with Uber to transport its carers and home patients.

Cera said it had struck a deal with Uber to transport its London-based carers to their patients, while its disabled customers will be able to use UberAssist and UberWav to get out and about.

In a separate deal, Cera is to provide on-the-go care to patients of several NHS hospitals, covering five million people. Specifically, at Barts Health NHS trust, the largest NHS trust in the country, Cera will deliver care for patients, including those with dementia and cancer, in their homes.

A spokeswoman for Barts said, however, that its contract with Cera did not cover patient transport, as had been incorrectly reported by the media [including the agency report on which the earlier Guardian article was based].

“We do not have any contracts with Uber to provide non-emergency patient transport,” she said. “When patients need assistance getting to and from our hospitals we provide ambulances and medi-cars, driven by trained experts.

“We are working with a number of registered organisations, including Cera, to make sure patients get vital support in their own homes. This includes physiotherapy, nursing or domestic support to help people recover after a stay in hospital.”

Cera was launched in November 2016 and is regulated by the Care Quality Commission.

In a statement announcing the deal with Uber, Cera said: “The partnership will enable Cera’s London-based carers to use Uber to get to the people they are caring for as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

“It will also give those who need care the freedom to book cars so they can get out and about when they would otherwise have been housebound, or had to rely on someone else.

“Disabled customers, or those who need a little extra help, will be able to book UberAssist – or a fully wheelchair accessible vehicle through UberWav – driven by one of Uber’s hundreds of fully licensed and top-rated partner drivers, who have been through a specially designed disability equality training course.”

Dr Ben Maruthappu, a former doctor and Cera’s co-founder, said the Uber deal would “radically integrate care and transport through technology”, adding: “Older people and those with disabilities will now have access to the highest-quality drivers, while carers will be able to efficiently travel to ensure they can provide services in the right place at the right time.”

The Unison general secretary, Dave Prentis, said: “Social care and the NHS are in such a state of crisis that any initiative to ease the pressure will be welcomed by patients and staff.

“But the funding chasm between what is needed and the pitiful amount councils currently have to commission care is too deep. Nothing short of an emergency injection of cash in the budget, followed by the sustained and realistic funding of health and care will be enough.

“The government must also ensure that all companies that win care contracts don’t exploit staff and pay at the very least the minimum wage. Sadly there are still many out there breaking the law and getting away with it.”

David Mowat, the minister for community and social care, said: “This is an interesting and innovative proposal which will help raise awareness of the challenges faced by the vulnerable elderly, and those with specific conditions that are becoming increasingly common in our society.”

Private healthcare firm signs Uber deal for carers and patients

NHS trust may use Uber taxis to transfer non-emergency patients

Uber taxis could soon be used to transfer non-emergency patients with illnesses ranging from cancer to dementia back and forth from NHS hospitals in a deal that could play a part in “cracking down” on bedblocking, according to the social care company behind it.

The agreement with Barts health NHS trust in London will allow patients to use Uber for journeys including hospital appointments, the care service startup Cera said.

The firm will use UberAssist disabled access cars and the UberWav service for wheelchair users. Carers will also be able to use the system alongside traditional forms of transport to determine the most efficient method for moving people, Cera said.

Patients will be looked after by Ceracarers under the London scheme, which uses a smartphone app to coordinate care, book drivers, and keep relatives informed.

Dr Ben Maruthappu, a former doctor and Cera’s co-founder, said the move would “radically integrate care and transport through technology”, adding: “Older people and those with disabilities will now have access to the highest-quality drivers, while carers will be able to efficiently travel to ensure they can provide services in the right place at the right time.”

“These partnerships tackle major challenges in the NHS, cracking down on bed-blocking and delayed discharges, while providing high-quality and efficient care.”

As well as the five London hospitals that make up the trust, clinical commissioning groups in Harrow, Brent and Hillingdon in north London will also use the service.

The Unison general secretary, Dave Prentis, said: “Social care and the NHS are in such a state of crisis that any initiative to ease the pressure will be welcomed by patients and staff.

“But the funding chasm between what is needed and the pitiful amount councils currently have to commission care is too deep. Nothing short of an emergency injection of cash in the budget, followed by the sustained and realistic funding of health and care will be enough.

“The government must also ensure that all companies that win care contracts don’t exploit staff and pay at the very least the minimum wage.

“Sadly there are still many out there breaking the law and getting away with it.”

David Mowat, minister for community and social care, said: “This is an interesting and innovative proposal which will help raise awareness of the challenges faced by the vulnerable elderly, and those with specific conditions that are becoming increasingly common in our society.”

NHS trust may use Uber taxis to transfer non-emergency patients

Can An Uber Investor Deliver Silicon Valley Disruption To Healthcare?

Numerous tweets right now from Benchmark Capital spouse Bill Gurley suggests that the legendary VC company – popular for their backing of eBay, Uber, OpenTable, and Yelp, amongst others – could be preparing to get critical about healthcare, and aggressively crowdsource their search for new options.

“Spending time learning where the Web intersects with healthcare. If you have concepts and want to chat, get in touch with me: overall health@benchmark.com,” he initially tweeted, incorporating, “100% convinced US healthcare industry is genuinely messed up &amp that implies possibility, 17% of GDP.”

Possibly most interestingly, Gurley mentioned that “approach must be orthogonal/disruptive. Not interested in ideas that spouse closely with current players.”  He asserts,“i dont want a swift exit, but I really do not want to fret about trials and regulation as well considerably both.“

This positioning would seem to align Gurley with other engineering VCs like Vinod Khosla, who believe the greatest opportunities lie in operating outdoors the present program, which they tend to view as irredeemably dysfunctional.

Others firms, although possibly sharing a similar view of the status quo (“calcified hairball program of care”), nevertheless appear to strive to recognize solutions that address discomfort-points of existing gamers, and more usually, try to operate inside of the framework of the current system.  I’d spot Venrock, Aberdare, and Sequoia in this class.  Notably, Venrock’s efforts right here are led by physician Bob Kocher, Aberdare has a legacy in existence science and just lately pivoted to healthcare providers and digital wellness (capstoned by the hiring of doctor Mo Kaushal), and Sequoia’s efforts appear to be led by former healthcare CEO, Todd Cozzens.

(Conspicuously absent from this list are companies like Social+Capital, my 2013 digital well being investor of the year although I might be tempted to place founder Chamath Palihapitiya squarely in the Gurley/Khosla camp, at least some of his portfolio companies, this kind of as Geoff Clapp’s Better, seem to be centered, at least initially, on functioning inside of the existing technique.)

The basic question isn’t so a lot no matter whether healthcare requirements disruption (it does), but rather, whether this adjust is far more probably to be achieved by brash brilliant upstarts, working from with no, or by savvy, visionary insiders, who know exactly where to search for seams.

A latest, unsettling HBR publish by Jason Hwang (co-author of The Innovator’s Prescription) and Ateev Mehrotra, describes what they see as the failure of retail clinics to transform healthcare.  “Understanding their disappointing overall performance is especially critical,” Hwang and Mehrotra  write,

“given that retail clinics are viewed as the prototypical illustration of how disruptive innovation can alter the health care system for the better. The thought of disruptive innovation, a idea pioneered by the Harvard Enterprise School’s Clayton Christensen and written about previously in HBR and in a book that one particular of us co-authored, is that industries are a lot more generally transformed by new entrants, rather than entrenched gamers. Disruptive firms get their start off by supplying affordability, ease, and simplicity to previously neglected market place segments that are too little and reduced margin for incumbents to pursue or aggressively defend.

Retail clinics match this description to a tee “

However, Hwang and Mehrotra argue, retail clinics have been derailed by “perversities in rules and reimbursement.”  (An assertion with which Christensen, as properly as HMS Dean Jeffrey Flier and researcher Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, would seem to agree.)

But, if any person has purpose to believe in the potential of a promising thought to overcome “perversities in regulation,” it just may well be Bill Gurley, a fellow who invested in an upstart car support that that has had to battle its way into a historically regulated and impenetrable market place, and  aside from displeasing Jessica Seinfeld,  seems to have been remarkably profitable.

The abiding hope is that whether or not led from the inside or the outside, the irresistible force of inspired entrepreneurship will find some way to dislodge the immovable object of contemporary healthcare.

Can An Uber Investor Deliver Silicon Valley Disruption To Healthcare?