Part II: Uber Health is More Than Just a Transportation Platform

Vince Kuraitis and Dr. Randy Williams talked with Caitlin Donovan, the Global Head of Uber Health, and Dr. Michael Cantor, the Chief Medical Officer of Uber Health, to learn more about Uber’s healthcare platform.

Part I of the interview summary covered 1) how Uber Health functions and how it supports the care of populations, and 2) how Uber Health harnesses network effects.

In today’s Part II, you will learn 1) why Uber launched Uber Health, and 2) how Uber Health manages opportunities and challenges presented by software and workflow integration.

Continue reading to understand how Uber Health is so much more than a transportation platform!

Why Did Uber Launch Uber Health? A Discussion of Platform Envelopment Strategies.

Vince Kuraitis:

I’d like to explore a little bit from the Uber company parent point of view–why they gave birth to Uber Health and why from a business perspective Uber Health complements the major service.

I’m going to speculate here–and you can comment on my speculation. A typical strategy by platforms is known as platform envelopment, by which a platform can expand into adjacent markets by leveraging their existing assets and or infrastructure of the core platform. And that’s my sense of what I see Uber, the parent company doing when it establishes services like Uber Health, Uber Eats, etc.

So how did Uber decide to expand into Uber Health? Can you help us understand the decision-making process from the parent company’s point of view?

Caitlin Donovan:

I think you hit the nail on the head. When you have a large marketplace and you are looking for increasing both consumer demand and your supply, you look for those use cases and adjacencies that just make a lot of sense and allow you to use the tools you have, the assets you have, the technology you have in novel ways. And that’s exactly how Uber Health was born.

Uber Health was born in 2018, well before Mike and I were here. Taking that concept of we have this large platform – how could we use it to move patients? And the results were pretty incredible. Eventually, we found that the existing structure for transportation benefits for healthcare needed some innovation as well. You needed the ability to move people on demand–to not call 10 different places to find out who could pick up the patient, to not have a patient wait for three hours in a waiting room while they waited for a transportation company to come pick them up. And so again, we found that there was a really core product-market fit to tap into that natural consumer demand.

I think the other really interesting thing about the types of patients that we serve is these patients aren’t necessarily native Uber users on their own. It’s a Medicaid population that may not sign up for Uber. It’s a Medicare population that may be slower to sign up for Uber. By offering that first ride that’s covered by a health plan, a provider, et cetera, I again think there’s another nice network effect there that if you like your experience when it’s paid for by your provider, you might use it in your personal life as well.

Michael Cantor:

From the healthcare business perspective: How do I know what I’m spending on transportation and how do I know that I’m getting value for it? How do I know I’m complying with all of the many healthcare related regulations and insurance regulations? This makes it much easier, simpler to access that data in a meaningful and continuous way with reporting. So exactly who was where and when.

Randy Williams:

No, I think this has been wonderful. It’s great to see an illustrative example of a company that’s actually using a platform approach to transforming healthcare. And I’m very excited for the work you’re doing and yet understand as you guys do the complexities of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Check out the 4th and final part of our conversation with Caitlin and Dr. Cantor, where we explore how Uber Health plugs into existing clinical workflows to streamline the care journey for providers, payors, and patients, here.

Managing the Opportunities & Challenges Presented by Software and Workflow Integration

Randy Williams:

I’m just sort of curious in terms of the technology and how it interoperates or interfaces with all the various points of connection that you need to establish in order to execute a use case. You’ve got a payer, they have their own systems, you’ve got third party administrators, they have their own systems, you have a network of providers, they have many systems and of course then there are whatever suppliers that you’re interacting with as well.

So maybe you could touch on how the system that you built is organized in a way to be able to facilitate and interoperate with those other systems.

Caitlin Donovan:

I have two thoughts there. The first is, I think it’s really important to think about interoperability and all of the touchpoints you have in the context of a process, not just technology alone. Because if you are fully dependent on technological interoperability without thinking about the process design first, I think you build the wrong integration. The way that we’ve built our technology is to be able to test a process and then integrate so that you aren’t integrating and encouraging a process that doesn’t make sense.

Practically speaking, what I mean by that from a technology standpoint is all of the services we have are available via a web-based dashboard or an API. What we find with our customers is we tend to use that web-based dashboard first. Even if the ultimate intent is to integrate into their native systems. Using a health plan as an example: we have a lot of health plans that use our dashboard on a second screen in their call center with the full intention that down the road they’ll integrate into their main system so that they can get the process right first and not let perfection be the enemy of good.

Once customers have figured out the process, they tend to integrate our API. So whether that’s the API integrations with EHR systems that we’ve announced like Cerner or it’s a customer’s home-built case management system, call center system, or CRM. We’re indifferent to what the front end looks like as long as we are making sure we’re providing that connectivity to care and a process that works for all.

Michael Cantor:

From the perspective of the healthcare industry, if you don’t know what the workflow is, you can’t integrate into that workflow. And many of those workflows, by the way, would benefit from an evaluation and redesign. So in some ways it’s a good excuse for us to remind our partners, “Hey, how many steps are you using today? And could this be a little simpler?” In that way, it helps to spur that kind of broader thinking as well.

No, I think you covered it really well. That’s just a question of doing it the right way at the right time, because you can waste a lot of time and money integrating services and then no one uses them because it wasn’t built to facilitate a process that was already in place. I mean that’s another lesson in healthcare.

Vince Kuraitis:

The API strikes me as very useful–what kinds of categories of software across different customers can Uber Health integrate with? I’m guessing EHRs, care coordination platforms. Does the list go on?

Caitlin Donovan:

It does. There’s EHRs, care coordination platforms, call centers, software, and patient engagement tools of health plans. If you want a patient to be able to navigate on their own but not download the Uber app, we can integrate into patient engagement tools of health plans. We’ve even integrated into some nursing software. When you think about social determinants of health, they exist not just for patients but for their caregivers. Our APIs allow us to be flexible to be able to integrate with any native software.

Where we spend a lot of time is not just saying, “Here’s our technology,” and throwing it over the wall without any guidance, but really advising our customers on what their goal is. What’s the process they’re going to use to get there? We have a whole team of implementation experts that have been healthcare operators for years to ask the right questions and help consultatively guide what that implementation looks like – whether it’s a process implementation with our web-based software or an API implementation.

Michael Cantor:

I’d add that it’s a two-way street. So we’re also thinking about what to integrate into our platform as well that adds more value when we make it available to others. For example, I mentioned earlier the health plan eligibility and benefit checking. If you have to go to a separate eligibility and benefit check, that’s going to be a barrier. So to the extent that we can build that in, that’s providing something which will benefit everyone who uses our systems because they’ll be able to know if something is covered or not. And if not, there are alternative options. These are other solutions that we can think about from a financial perspective that can empower and cover those services when specific benefit designs are exhausted.

Caitlin Donovan:
From my perspective, I think the fallacy of big tech in healthcare is thinking if we build it, they will come. But we recognize that this is an existing ecosystem that has been around for many years and if you can’t operate on their terms – whether that means being able to pay a claim or accepting an eligibility file – you don’t get to play. And so like Mike said, I’m pretty passionate about that topic and making sure that we can operate with the basic fundamentals that any health plan expects.

Michael Cantor:

I’d add by the way, claims payment for transportation services required building the right codes, building the right rate file, and more. I mean it sounds very simple at first glance, but it turns out to be way more complicated and difficult. But to Caitlin’s point, if we don’t do that, a lot of people who should be able to access these benefits won’t be able to, because the health plan systems aren’t designed to manage non-claims payment approaches to supporting or paying for services.

Vince Kuraitis:

So Mike, Caitlin–thank you so much. You’ve given us incredible insights and even more for me understanding the depth and I just see incredible potential.

Randy Williams:

So like Vince I’m very impressed with what you’re doing and want to thank you for spending time with us today. We wish you great success here in 2023.

Caitlin Donovan:

Thank you so much for having us. This was a lovely conversation.

Michael Cantor:

Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.