Allscripts and Lyft Partner to Eliminate Transportation Barriers to Health Care

Allscripts and Lyft, the fastest growing rideshare company in the United States, are joining forces to incorporate nonemergency transportation directly into the physician's workflow. Leveraging Lyft's proprietary application programming interface (API) and Allscripts Open platform, the companies plan to integrate this functionality, into Allscripts Sunrise EHR, to enable clinicians to order the Lyft service for patients.

Today, 3.6 million Americans have transportation issues that prevent them from getting to or from a doctor's appointment, and 25% of lower-income patients have missed or rescheduled appointments due to lack of transportation. Through this partnership, Allscripts and Lyft have the potential to reach millions of Americans, in an effort to eliminate these transportation barriers and improve access to health care.

"Through a seamless integration of Lyft's API and Allscripts' EHR system, we're empowering clinicians to eliminate transportation barriers for millions of people across the country by making it easier to get to and from medical appointments with Lyft," says Gyre Renwick, vice president of Lyft Business. "Our partnership with Allscripts is an important next step towards reaching our goal of cutting in half the number of Americans that face transportation issues to medical appointments by 2020, as we work to ultimately improve people's lives with the world's best transportation."

Sunrise offers an intelligent, comprehensive suite of solutions for large, multispecialty institutions. Built on an Open platform with advanced clinical decision support, Sunrise provides immediate analysis and insights across inpatient, ambulatory, emergency, and other high-acuity care settings.

In a continuing effort to help their clients solve the problems they face, Allscripts is working to integrate Sunrise EHR with Lyft's Concierge API through key points of care. When patients' transportation needs are noted in Sunrise, an automated workflow would schedule Lyft transportation for that patient. Additionally, tracking boards would provide real-time notifications of patient pickup, ETA, and arrival for providers and other members of the care team. Allscripts expects that this first-of-its-kind integration will provide reliable and easy functionality to schedule transportation for patients to ensure they do not miss critical follow-up care. 

"Health IT should always put the patient first and this partnership is representative of Allscripts' commitment to connecting communities and helping providers deliver services their patients need," says Allscripts CEO Paul Black. "Our Open platform and vision for true interoperability enables us to work with a range of partners to deliver innovative solutions in all areas of care, and we feel it's our responsibility to provide tools to help consumers access care."

— Source: Allscripts