The healthcare system offers the new service to patients in need of transport between the system’s 30 outpatient sites and two hospitals. Loyola also plans to use the service to transfer blood work and other labs throughout the system.
Loyola Health leaders hope the program will be convenient and helpful to patients as competition heats up between area healthcare systems.
“Keeping [patients] in our system really is a patient request and something we can guarantee more often if we provide the [transport] service than if we were to call or contract an ambulance,” Dan Post, Loyola’s executive vice president of network development and system integration, told Crain’s.
Loyola created the service through a joint venture with Community Emergency Medical Service, a Southfield, Mich.-based emergency services company. Community EMS will centralize medical billing and dispatch calls, and the two organizations will share any revenue generated.
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