Practice Management Alert

Question: Will offering free rides to Medicaid beneficiaries help them make their appointments?

New Jersey Subscriber

Answer: Probably not. A study conducted by Krisda H. Chaiyachati, MD, MPH, MSHP; Rebecca A. Hubbard, PhD; and Alyssa Yeager, MD, et. al., recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) looked at the relationship between offering free rides to Medicaid recipients for primary care appointments in Philadelphia and those recipients attending their appointments.

Experts see transportation as a main barrier to primary care appointment attendance, and this study evaluated whether rideshare-based medical transportation helped people make their appointments.

The study found that the rideshare program was slow to implement. "The uptake of ridesharing was low and did not decrease missed primary care appointments. Future studies trying to reduce missed appointments should explore alternative delivery models or targeting populations with stronger transportation needs," JAMA says in its key points about this study.

Resource: Read the full study here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2671405?redirect=true.