Digital maternal health company Babyscripts announced a partnership Tuesday with Lyft Healthcare to offer sponsored rides for people who are pregnant or postpartum and face barriers to transportation.
Though Babyscripts is a digital-first, tele-maternal health company, it acknowledges that pregnant individuals also need in-person care.
“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,” Anish Sebastian, CEO and co-founder of Babyscripts, said in a statement.
The Lyft partnership will identify transportation-insecure patients and offer free rides to in-person appointments in traditional care settings like hospitals or outpatient departments but also will provide transportation to community-based healthcare services and programs.
“I think our partnership with Lyft is ultimately an indication of how technology companies—big companies, like Lyft, small companies like ours … can work together in ways to improve access to care quality and lower costs," Sebastian said.
Babyscripts operates in 27 states covering 250,000 pregnancies. It offers digital prenatal education, remote patient monitoring and tele-mental health services to pregnant and postpartum individuals. The pilot will be available in select locations.
Through the pilot, Babyscripts hopes to increase utilization of prenatal and postpartum care, which is linked to better outcomes. Sebastian noted that many health plans including Medicaid programs often have some ride-sharing covered but said many people lack awareness of the benefit.
“Digital health companies can't take the stance of like, [doing] everything ourselves, right? It takes a village,” Sebastian said.
Babyscripts hopes the partnership can assist pregnant and postpartum individuals irrespective of geography; however, he said that the pilot will likely have to run in locations where Lyft is already available, which can exclude rural areas.
But even in cities with robust public transit apparatuses, some pregnant individuals can still benefit from Lyft transportation services to and from pregnancy-related healthcare appointments, Sebastian said.
“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,” Sebastian said.