Theme 3: Transit & Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
How can we increase access to economic and healthcare opportunities for North Carolinians?
Project 3: First Mile to Health: Improving Healthcare Access in North Carolina
The Problem
Recently, changes have been made to Medicaid healthcare delivery, and our access to transportation has shifted due to uptake of new transportation systems and technologies, such as Uber and Lyft. What do these changes mean for healthcare access for North Carolinians, especially in rural and underserved populations?
Did you know? An estimated 3.6 million Americans miss medical care each year because of transportation-related barriers (Wallace et al., 2005)
Our Research
We seek to understand how these two coinciding shifts impact public transportation providers, community members, and healthcare providers. We are analyzing a community transportation system in eastern NC that received a grant to implement Mobility as a Service (MaaS) to provide transportation in the area. We are also surveying community members to understand how they access healthcare and what their transportation barriers are.
Our Goals
From our comprehensive data analysis and surveys, we will model different service delivery methods to see if alternate options provide better access to healthcare for community members. We will evaluate if our models improve patient travel times, wait times, costs, and transit system volumes and expenses.
Ultimately, we seek to offer policy makers and health care providers a decision support tool and long term plan to optimize healthcare access and MaaS for residents of North Carolina.
How this work benefits North Carolina
The solutions we offer will help our state address the transit and healthcare access needs of our aging and rural populations.