Ford Motor Co. is no longer offering rides to the doctor’s office.
The Dearborn-based automaker said it is pulling the plug on its non-emergency medical transport service called GoRide Health, at least in its current form. The service is offered in five cities including Detroit.
“We have advised our customers and suppliers that the mobility services delivered by GoRide Health over the past two years will move to the next phase by aligning operations with our autonomous vehicle launch cities,” said Ford spokesman Marty Gunsberg.
That means Ford’s GoRide Health will be part of a pilot program in Miami that will focus on the service in a self-driving car form. Ford did not provide a start date for the pilot.
The current services using human drivers in “non-AV launch cities” such as Detroit will be suspended by the end of this year, said Gunsberg. The service also operates in Toledo, Dayton, Cleveland and Cincinnati.
“Ford is committed to improving access to transportation for those with limited mobility,” said Gunsberg. “The planned Miami pilot will help Ford better understand the role AVs can play in this important transport sector.”
He declined to provide further details about the pilot program. But the publication TechCrunch said the pilot project will “research how transporting people for non-emergency care like doctor’s appointments matches up with its go-to-market strategy for autonomous vehicles.”
Ford launched GoRide, which shuttled patients to medical appointments at more than 200 Beaumont Health facilities across southeast Michigan, early last year after running a pilot of it in 2017.
It used professionally trained drivers, on-demand wheelchair service and properly outfitted transportation vans, Ford said. Patients could book transport service up to 30 days in advance. The average trip cost $45-$60, Automotive News reported.
GoRide was well received by customers and achieved high “on-time rates through Ford’s proprietary dynamic routing technology to automatically dispatch and pool rides,” said Gunsberg.
As recently as September, Ford aggressively expanded the program. It partnered with the Detroit Medical Center to extend its GoRide service to the health system’s Detroit Receiving Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Michigan, the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, Sinai-Grace Hospital, Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital, DMC Heart Hospital, Harper University Hospital and Hutzel Women’s Hospital, as well as approved physician partners, a Ford media release said.
The GoRide pilot began with five Transit Wagon vans and now has about 60 vans, said Gunsberg.
But Ford made the decision to end the GoRide Health service “very recently,” in line with its supplier contract extension deadlines, said Gunsberg.
Ford’s immediate priority is to work the customers’ health care providers to find new transportation for those customers using the GoRide Health service, he said.
Every year in the United States, missed appointments and scheduling inefficiencies cost the health-care industry $150 billion, according to a report by SCI Solutions.
GoRide is the second shuttle service ended by Ford within a year. It ended its Chariot on-demand bus service in February. Chariot, which Ford purchased for $65 million in 2016, built transit routes based on demand. Using the app, customers could book a seat in a Chariot van for around $4 a trip, The Verge website reported when the service was ending.
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.
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