While Uber Health plans to distance itself as far as possible from patients' personal health information, the non-emergency transportation service does support its business partners leveraging PHI, according to Politico's Morning eHealth Nov. 22 newsletter.
Dan Trigub, head of Uber Health, told Politico that the company does share "a lot" of PHI with its partners. For example, partnering health systems receive data about the specific patient rides scheduled through Uber Health's platform and can use the data to support various capabilities.
"[They can offer rides to patients] who have missed appointments in the past, who live in a zip code where there's poor access to public transportation. Who are likely to miss an appointment," said Mr. Trigub, according to the report. "They can surface it through an EHR and let the care professional know, 'this is somebody that [you should] provide with a ride,' and do an eligibility check on that patient and see if their payer will cover the cost of that ride."
In October, Uber Health partnered with Cerner. The agreement will allow healthcare providers to schedule Uber transportation for patients directly from the Cerner EHR to help patients get to their appointments. In addition to patient transportation, the ride share giant is also considering expanding its service to deliver healthy meals, medications and medical equipment.
Uber Health is still exploring how its partners should be able to use its data, and Mr. Trigub said the company "absolutely does not" share its data with any third parties. He added that the company is focused on collaborating with its partners to ensure they set a benchmark that partners don't work with third parties or data brokers on their own.