Babyscripts, the leading virtual maternity care program for managing obstetrics, today announced a collaboration with Lyft Healthcare to provide sponsored rides to and from doctor appointments for transportation-insecure maternity patients via Lyft Pass. The collaboration is supported by grant funding awarded to Babyscripts by Lyft Healthcare, and will aid maternity patients in attending care appointments, regardless of risk, by connecting them to efficient and reliable transportation. Rides will be available to pregnant and postpartum women receiving care through Babyscripts in select geographies.
With this offering, participating Babyscripts users will be prompted to complete a transportation security assessment within the Babyscripts mobile app to determine their access to adequate transportation. On identification of transportation risk, Babyscripts will provide qualifying patients with a discount code to cover the cost of rides with Lyft to and from their doctor appointments.
Access to affordable and reliable transportation can be a determining factor in maternal and infant health outcomes. Prenatal care, including regular doctor visits, is vitally important to a successful, healthy pregnancy; however, some patients struggle with finding transportation to get to their regular prenatal doctor appointments. Inadequate prenatal care, experienced by more than 15% of pregnant women, is associated with poor outcomes such as preterm birth and low birthweight, and can be an indicator of long term health problems for mother and child.
“Access is one of the biggest challenges to maternal health and infant health — and a patient’s outcomes can come down to whether or not they go to their doctor appointments,” said Anish Sebastian, CEO and co-founder of Babyscripts. “Some patients in low access areas need to take two or three buses to get to the doctor’s office — that’s half of their day gone to attend an appointment. Many just can’t take that amount of time off of work or find support for children at home, and they end up being forced to miss an appointment. With this partnership, we’re making sure that those patients have a quick and reliable source of transportation with rides through Lyft.”
“At Lyft Healthcare, our mission is to help people lead healthier lives with the world’s best transportation, by ensuring everyone who needs a ride gets a ride, regardless of age, income, or ability,” said Buck Poropatich, Head of Lyft Healthcare. “That’s why we’re excited to collaborate with Babyscripts to provide access to sponsored Lyft rides to and from prenatal appointments, and study how offering a seamless, user-friendly transportation solution can help improve access to maternal care. Together, we can take steps to improve maternal health equity, one ride at a time.”
This initiative marks the most recent step in Babyscripts’ commitment to maternity care that comprehensively addresses risks, both clinical and non-clinical. It is one of the many ways through which Babyscripts enables better access to care for pregnant and postpartum patients, and ensures that recognition of risk always leads to a response.
Babyscripts’ maternity care program supports every aspect of the patient’s care journey, engaging the pregnant or postpartum patient as an active member of their care team with tools and resources that patients can conveniently access through a smartphone. Through Babyscripts, the patient can self-identify risk through several modalities; including surveys, assessments, and remote patient monitoring. Babyscripts’ dynamic risk stratification model activates the right members of the care team to manage those risks and effectively direct the patient’s journey.
