Comments on: Improving access to healthcare by improving transportation options

By: Andrew Bostrom

Andrew Bostrom — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:31:44 +0000

I would like to affirm the reality described above. I am a student nurse currently doing a community health rotation at a community center in Detroit, Michigan, a city notorious for its lack of public transit. Long before the car companies were on life support, they dismantled the extensive trolley system that innervated this city (a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) It has repeatedly been the case that the transportation company contracted by Medicaid to pick up my patients has failed to show up, and then denied that they failed to do so. I have waited at the curb with my patients, as the times for both pick-ups and then the doctor’s appointments have come and gone, and the rides did not show up. When I have called to ask why a car did not come, I was told that the car did come, and no one was there. Even when preventive health services are available, therefore, they are often inaccessible to those who need them most. I am not saying anything new here, I know, but feel I must bear witness.

By: Hernand Paler

Hernand Paler — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:48:56 +0000

Medicaid Patients in Houston, Texas are mostly left behind or pick-up too late. Doctor Offices, Security Personnel in the Buildings are complaining. MEDICAID Medical Transportation has only one contractor and have it sub-contract with different smaller transportation company. There is no compitition. If we could only open the contract to all that meets and qualify the standard of MEDICAID then transportation company will compete to serve in its highest level of performance. I hope TEXAS would change the system in the near future to improve the level of service that our MEDICAID patients are getting. The government is paying this ONE BIG COMPANY a lot of money to do the job, but they are passing the service to smaller company and paying them less.
I DO HOPE THE RIGHT PERSON TO ACT COULD READ MY CONCERN
THANK YOU
Hernand Paler

By: Beata Bujalska

Beata Bujalska — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:43:08 +0000

Accessibility through better transportation – often overlooked in the health care discussions. Accessibility to services usually centers on the financial ability to cover treatments, and something that has been central to the debate, but focusing on physical accessibility really hits the transportation-health care nail on the head.