Uber CEO: We’re Bringing ‘Everything On Demand’ To Healthcare

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi says the rideshare and delivery technology giant is quickly bringing its “omni channel” strategy and “everything on demand” to the healthcare industry.

In an interview Thursday at the 2021 Forbes Healthcare Summit, Khosrowshahi said Uber has been working “behind the scenes” for the last five years “building out the tool sets” and capabilities to help improve the healthcare experience of patients. Uber has expanded its relationships with health insurers, healthcare provider systems and companies that work with drugstore chains on prescription delivery.

“Healthcare has to go omnichannel,” Khosrowshahi said. “Essentially our mission is to help people go anywhere and get anything. We can help people and systems essentially architect themselves so patients can go to get help.”

Take Uber’s work serving enrollees of health insurers like Centene, for example, which screens its Medicaid health plan members who have issues gaining access to healthcare providers. Centene can enroll these patients into programs that have the care “pathway needed for patient care to be leveraged through Uber,” Khosrowshahi said.

“From an Uber standpoint, our playing a part and making healthcare delivery available to a broader segment of the population . . . is really the part we can play,” Khosrowshahi said. “But we have to do so in very close partnership with industry as well. As long as we optimize the experience of accessing health benefits both for individual patients and the case managers as well in order to serve a broader population, we think we are doing our part.” 

Uber is building its services so they can be “HIPAA” secure to ensure patients and their health records remain private under the rules the federal privacy law as information is exchanged via medical care providers, health insurers and the ride-share company. Uber also has a text-messaging service for those patients who don’t have the Uber app and has its services available in 20 different languages.

Uber has also expanded deeper into the prescription delivery business by partnering with the software firm ScriptDrop and its relationships with pharmacy chains. ScriptDrop works with the pharmacies to improve and build their medication delivery platforms, which should eventually lead to more Uber customers being able to take advantage of delivery from the pharmacy they use to their homes.

“I do think that consumer expectations of everything on demand in general are changing and the expectations of healthcare providers are changing as well,” Khosrowshahi said. “We have seen real innovations in healthcare. Medicare Advantage is allowing coverage of ancillary benefits like transportation and the pandemic accelerating care delivery outside of traditional settings has come together into this perfect storm.”

To be sure, Medicare Advantage plans, which are private health insurers that contract with the federal government to provide benefits to seniors, are covering more supplemental benefits including ride share and additional outpatient services under changes implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in recent years.

That means a boom of business for ride-share giants including Uber and rival Lyft that have contracts with major operators of Medicare Advantage plans including CVS Health’s Aetna, UnitedHealth Group, Humana, Anthem and other Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, Centene and others.

“We and industry have to develop that omnichannel look in order ultimately to drive a full sum solution to serve the customer, which in the end is an individual who is getting healthcare, or needs healthcare or is getting preventive care,” Khosrowshahi said.” We want to partnership with industry to do so.”