MedHaul, a platform for coordinating medical transport, has raised $4.1 million in an unnamed round, Fierce Healthcare has learned exclusively.
The strategic round, which brings MedHaul’s total raised to date to $7 million, was led by Black Ops VC, with participation from Pier 70 Ventures, Seae Ventures, Stanford University, 450 Ventures (BCBS of Alabama), LaunchTN and American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge.
The latest capital will be used to expand deeper in oncology, which represents 60% of rides booked on the platform, and to support a forthcoming Epic integration.
Millions of Americans are affected by transportation barriers to care, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that these barriers account for a quarter or more of missed clinic appointments. Missed appointments are associated with mortality among patients with chronic conditions and cost the system billions annually, according to one 2017 estimate.
MedHaul is a B2B platform working with providers and payers. Its tech helps providers match patients with medical transport according to acuity and accommodation needs, such as a wheelchair or stretcher. Care teams can use MedHaul to schedule and track transportation, with same-day and advanced bookings available. They can also manage billing, communicate with patients and identify those at greater risk of missing an appointment. MedHaul also rolled out a newer clinical trial product designed to support CROs and pharma clients.
The existing medical transport ecosystem is “very antiquated” and “heavily manual,” MedHaul founder and CEO Erica Plybeah told Fierce Healthcare. Many transport companies are small businesses that are not tech-savvy, or that need business development support. When MedHaul first entered the market, in 2019, some vendors didn’t even have a website or a social media page, Plybeah noted. And manual back-and-forths between care teams and ride providers means it can take upwards of two hours just to book a ride.
MedHaul’s network spans 17 states, primarily serving patients in the cancer, kidney disease, maternal health and behavioral health spaces. It also supports hospital discharges and rural patients. It has about 600 transport companies in its network.
MedHaul has also launched an enterprise platform, designed for large health systems and multi-location practices. Through a partnership with Uber Health, ride share and non-emergency medical transport bookings are available in one place, on the platform. The platform also provides real-time analytics into patient mobility, enabled by AI.
"There are opportunities in healthcare where AI is bridging the gap to solve for unmet needs—and that’s exactly what Erica and her team are doing at MedHaul,” James Norman, co-founder & managing partner at Black Ops VC, said in a statement. The user-friendly interface and focus on high-acuity communities “make MedHaul an attractive investment, and we’re proud to help them scale.”
Plybeah, who grew up in the Deep South with a grandmother who had diabetic and a double-leg amputee, saw how transportation issues affected her access to care. Throughout her career in clinical and research informatics, including at Epic Systems and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Plybeah “saw how transportation impacted institutions, when patients don’t show up on time, don’t show up at all, show up at the wrong facility … and it brought me back to being a little girl in the Mississippi Delta.”
Over half of MedHaul’s rides require mobility assistance, and 42% live in rural communities. MedHaul’s riders averaged eight rides per year in 2025.
Patients typically don’t pay anything for the rides booked on MedHaul. Instead, the MedHaul client—a provider or payer, for instance—sponsors the rides, often from an existing medical transport budget. In specialties with high transport volumes, providers may also use a patient’s benefit to find rides.
Same-day rides are available within 30 minutes to an hour, depending on acuity. For higher-acuity patients, a booking can take two to three hours, depending on the complexity of the transport required. MedHaul sees a 97% ride completion rate. Providers using MedHaul have reduced missed appointments by 25% and improved patient appointment timeliness by 52%, the company claims.
MedHaul has long used AI across its business. It has a conversational AI agent for older adults who prefer phone calls to texting. It also leverages AI agents to book rides within seconds for highly complex patients, and offers care teams MedHaul GPT, which they can use to ask questions about their programs and patients.
“We really prioritize good implementation,” Plybeah said, noting that there has been an explosion in digital health point solutions, but implementation is a whole different question. “We want this process to be as easy as possible for the end users.”
The company, which launched in 2019, is a public benefit corporation and a certified B Corp. While it’s still a for-profit business, its structure requires it to pursue a stated public benefit alongside financial returns. “We wanted our mission to extend beyond profit and to attract the right partners, investors, employees and customers who shared that commitment,” Plybeah said. “Our social mission is embedded in how we operate, build technology, serve patients and choose the people and organizations we work with.”
Plybeah is excited that there is more industry awareness of the social determinants of health. In the early MedHaul days, “folks seemed to think of transportation as a separate service,” she said. “And now I am grateful to see that folks are really considering transportation as part of the patient’s care journey, because it is.”