A new partnership between ShiftMed and Uber Health, Uber’s healthcare arm, designed to ease transportation issues for long-term care workers could make long-term care facilities more attractive to potential employees, ShiftMed CEO Jacob Laufer told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
Workers will be able to directly access on-demand rides to and from work within the ShiftMed app.
“If your facility has previously been off the bus line, nurses and aides will now be able to easily reach your location,” Laufer said. “We also see this making long-term care facilities a top place to work so that we can continue to attract and retain staff for the residents. Where else can you easily get an Uber ride to work?”
The option, according to the partners, could boost nurse recruitment and retention by eliminating transportation issues as a stressor.
“We understand that one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare today is the critical staffing shortage. We’re constantly exploring new ways to better support the existing labor pool and help recruit new clinicians,” Caitlin Donovan, global head of Uber Health, said in a press release from the companies. “Our unique integration with ShiftMed across multiple levels of their platform will better enable healthcare professionals, which in turn can result in improved patient care and reduced costs for facilities across the country.”
ShiftMed said it also will make the technology available to partnering providers to assist them with their own shift coverage and retention activities. This availability would include providing transportation for staff members and leveraging vouchers from Uber as part of internal loyalty programs to reward high engagement and incentivize resident/patient care.
