The Impact of Rideshare Transportation Services on Appointment Adherence

July 3, 2019 updated by: David Grande, University of Pennsylvania

This study is a prospective clinical trial designed to primarily test the impact of rideshare-based transportation services from a digital transportation network, Lyft, on reducing primary care clinic missed appointments--a composite outcome of no-shows and same day cancellations--for Medicaid patients. The study population consists of West Philadelphia residents who are established patients at two of the Penn Medicine Primary Care Practices within the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The study subjects are allocated into the intervention or control arm using a pseudorandomization approach - those receiving an appointment reminder on an even calendar day are in the intervention arm and odd calendar day calls are in the control arm.

Secondary outcomes include the time of arrival to the clinics relative to actual appointment time (both arms), prospective utilization of acute care settings (both arms), prospective utilization of primary care (both arms), and description of programmatic metrics in the intervention arm (travel time, misuse, and costs). The investigators will assess the patient experience after each ride using a telephone-based survey and in-depth interviews. All adults with established primary care at the Penn Medicine Clinics, who have Medicaid, and do not require wheelchair accessible rides will be eligible for the rideshare service. The investigators hypothesize that individuals offered a rideshare-based transportation service will have a decreased proportion of missed appointments and same day cancellations as those not offered the service.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

786

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Pennsylvania
      • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 19146
        • Penn Internal Medicine Primary Care Practice

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients insured by Medicaid
  • Established primary care patient at the Penn Medicine Clinics
  • Address in West Philadelphia zip code

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Requiring wheelchair accessible transportation. We are unable to guarantee vehicles that will be able to accommodate these patients' physical needs.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Rideshare
The intervention arm will receive an appointment reminder and free transportation for one appointment to travel between the patient's home and primary care clinic using a rideshare-based transportation service.
Other: Rideshare-based transportation
Other Names:
  • Digital transportation network
  • Lyft
No Intervention: Control
The control arm will receive an appointment reminder, but no free transportation offer.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
The proportion of missed appointments (no-shows and same-day cancellation) in the intervention arm and the control arm
Time Frame: Within 2 days of enrollment
The missed appointment proportion is based on the one appointment for which patients were contacted to receive a free ride
Within 2 days of enrollment

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Arrival time to clinic relative to the scheduled time (both arms)
Time Frame: Within 2 days of enrollment
Within 2 days of enrollment
Post-intervention, utilization frequency of acute care settings (both arms)
Time Frame: 7-days, 30-days, and 6 months post-appointment
7-days, 30-days, and 6 months post-appointment
Post-intervention, utilization frequency of primary care (both arms)
Time Frame: 7-days, 30-days, and 6 months post-appointment
7-days, 30-days, and 6 months post-appointment
Post-intervention, frequency of missed primary care appointments (both arms)
Time Frame: 30-days and 6-months post-appointment
30-days and 6-months post-appointment

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Pennsylvania

Collaborators

Lyft, Inc.

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

October 1, 2016

Primary Completion (Actual)

April 1, 2017

Study Completion (Actual)

November 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 31, 2016

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 2, 2016

First Posted (Estimate)

November 4, 2016

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

July 8, 2019

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 3, 2019

Last Verified

July 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • IRB-824715

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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