Empowered Patient Podcast Streamlining Non-Emergency Medical Transportation with Sufian Chowdhury Kinetik
Sufian Chowdhury, CEO of Kinetik, highlights how the non-emergency medical transportation industry, which has about 20,000 local transportation providers and over 400,000 drivers, plays a pivotal role in the healthcare continuum. Kinetik is bringing digital tools to this environment to provide scheduling and real-time information to an industry that currently relies on the phone. The goal is to make the system more efficient, reduce waiting times for patients and drivers, and ensure that drivers get paid promptly for these rides Medicaid covers.
Sufian explains, "These are pre-planned rides. This industry is non-digital. You have to liken the state of this industry to what the taxi industry was in the '90s. It’s a lot of telephonic communication. Not a lot of these transport companies are using technology. Because of that, the scheduling becomes very cumbersome, and some members have to request these rides three or four days in advance, not by choice but just because of the broken structure of this industry. We’re trying to fix that with Kinetik by digitizing it so that these rides can become real-time rides."
"One of the biggest challenges and how Kinetik started the genesis of Kinetik is to initially address the billing problem that transport providers were facing. They would send out claims and get paid every 60 to 90 days, yet they would have to pay their drivers every seven days. These are small businesses that struggled mightily when it came to cash flow management. So, the first problem we solved, as we entered this market about seven years ago, was to build a billing platform that allowed these transport providers to get paid on time or instantly. That was our initial goal."
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