MedHaul

I was inspired to found MedHaul due to having both lived and professional experience with the problem MedHaul is solving. I have personally experienced the pain of trying to find reliable transportation for my grandmother, a Type-2 Diabetic double-leg amputee, in rural Mississippi. Living outside of an urban center, my family regularly struggled to find and schedule rides for my grandmother to attend her appointments. Professionally, working in health systems across the country, I’ve worked with hospitals and physician groups to develop and implement technology solutions to help streamline workflows, and have seen first hand how clunky transportation workflows delay patient care, costing the US health system billions of dollars every year. 

5.8 million people in the United States delay medical care because they do not have transportation and annually over 3 million people do not receive care at all due to lack of reliable transportation resources. MedHaul works with healthcare providers to eliminate transportation barriers for vulnerable patients. 

Scheduling medical transportation is broken. 

Wasted Time: We found that it took nursing staff approximately 2.5 hrs of their shifts to schedule a wheelchair ride for a patient.

Financial loss: Everyone loses when patients do not attend medical appointments due to transportation barriers. Patients risk undesirable health outcomes that could be managed through preventative care. Clinics lose approximately $114 per missed appointment ($150B/year nationally) City governments lose millions of dollars a year dispatching ambulances for non-emergency situations. Hospitals lose money or can be fined (~$10K-15K per patient) if high-risk patients are readmitted into the hospital.

Delayed care: Patients that are low-income, rural, or require special transportation may experience difficulties receiving the care they need due to transportation barriers challenges they face. For example, low-income patients in cities like Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Charlotte, have low-rates of car ownership and a poor public transportation system that makes it difficult for many residents to get to healthcare appointments.

Manual and complex workflow: Key details are missed over the phone. Different scheduling processes for different transportation companies.
It is hard to keep track of our scheduled rides. Lack of automated patient connectivity and record keeping. It can be difficult to communicate special transportation needs. Healthcare providers don't have or collect the data to evaluate their patient's transportation's needs.

Vetting the appropriate transportation providers: Finding quality transportation companies is difficult.

MedHaul is a technology platform that streamlines the scheduling and delivery of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) for vulnerable patient populations. MedHaul’s single-source platform, streamlines and automates the entire non-emergency medical transportation and paratransit booking process. The online platform carefully screens the transportation requirements of each patient and automatically matches the appropriate vehicle type and capability with driver availability to quickly confirm ride requests.  MedHaul's technology automates the transportation scheduling process by providing a single platform to schedule one-time and recurring trips, while also accommodating medical transportation requests scheduled same-day or days, weeks, and months in advance.

To date, MedHaul completed over 9,000 rides, and increased overall volume of patients attending their appointments on time from 40% to 92%. 

MedHaul’s solution has been strategically developed to ensure the ability to support patients and their caregivers who are managing a wide variety of medically related needs. Managing diseases that require frequent visits, like diabetes and cancer, requires reliable access to transportation to help get to and from appointments. For example, "without access to transportation, delays in care may lead to a lack of appropriate treatment and unmet cancer care needs, which in turn could impair overall health.".

How our users interact with our platform:

Healthcare Organizations: Healthcare organizations use our platform to seamlessly book specialty rides for their patients. Using our platform, a ride request can specify pickup times, special needs (wheelchair, stretcher, etc.), and contact information for their patients. Healthcare organizations are updated on ride statuses.

Transportation Companies: Our network of trained, vetted companies are alerted of ride requests in their area. Within a few clicks, a provider can accept a ride request.

Riders: Riders have transportation solutions that fit their needs, facilitated by trained professionals. They stay connected through automated notifications that are triggered from our platform.

MedHaul works with healthcare providers (hospitals, insurers), patients and specialty transportation. We specifically target individuals that have been left out when innovation is developed, including: low income, rural, elderly, and disabled populations, along with those without reliable means of transportation. MedHaul aims to bring value to all stakeholders involved: 

Hospitals/Healthcare Organizations: 
--Ease of booking
--Reduce missed appointments, treatment interruptions, and improve patient outcomes
--Increase revenue through fewer missed appointments
--Improving patient satisfaction

Transportation Companies
--Increased revenue through more rides available
--Capacity management

Patients & Caregivers
 --Access to care
--Quality of service
--Feeling cared for by health system

By disrupting the stale medical transportation system for special needs patients MedHaul will provide efficient ride booking services to the medical providers. This solution will save time and money for health care providers and insurance companies, while at the same time improve the health and wellbeing of their clients. 

Over the next 3 years MedHaul estimates a cost savings of $304M for the health care providers and insurance companies. MedHaul also estimates a revenue increase of $54M for the transportation companies (small businesses). Most importantly, our MedHaul will drastically increase the health and wellbeing of over 50 million families across the county.

Our team knows the population MedHaul is built to serve. We have over 60 years of combined experience in digital health, software engineering, and logistics, and we’ve successfully led over [$700M] worth of complex projects for world renowned healthcare institutions and Fortune 500 companies and built tech products from the ground up for successful startups. We’re the right team to transform the massive special needs transportation industry.

Our team is well-positioned to deliver transportation innovations because we have an active, reliable product already in place. MedHaul currently enabling ambulatory, wheelchair, and stretcher transports to peoples of all ages across 7 states. 

MedHaul Leadership Team Bios 

Erica Plybeah (CEO):  Erica is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a Pre-Med concentration. She is certified as an ICS2 Healthcare Information Security Privacy Practitioner and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Erica is also a member of the American College of Health Executives (ACHE), Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE), where she chairs the BCBST Scholarship Committee and mentors students at Trezevant Vocational High School. In her spare time (ha!) she likes to travel, spend time outdoors with her son, have family movie nights, take naps and eat guacamole. 

Erica’s extended bio and recent prior projects

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: Reported directly to the CIO and CMIO (Chief Medical Information Officer) of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Managed the launch of the CMS project. St. Jude’s largest technology to date which included 15+ subprojects across 10 technology vendors, contracting through post-go-live. Led Clinical Research Informatics steering committee meetings and presentations for the CEO. 

Mid-South eHealth Alliance Health Information Exchange: Started as a team of 2 (myself and one other), Growing a dormant HIE (health information exchange) to reach over 2 million patients in West Tennessee, set up and managed integrations with 6 electronic medical records. 

Flatiron Health: Google Ventures backed-startup. Developed deployment plan and led the deployment of OncoEmr (leading oncology electronic medical record) across 60 oncology clinics across the county. 

Epic Systems and Cerner EMR Consultant: Developed training and deployment plan for oncology and pharmacy applications of the EMR. Trained over 2000+ pharmacists, physicians (oncologists and surgeons), nurses, and ancillary staff on transition from paper-driven workflows to EMR workflows. Led $600M EMR (pharmacy and oncology) deployment across 5 hospitals and 92 clinics. 

Nathalie Occean, MHA, CPHQ (Chief Operating Officer): Nathalie is a graduate of Rutgers University and the University of Memphis with 7 years of healthcare administration experience, with an emphasis on population health, quality and data analytics. Nathalie is also a long-time member of the American College of Health Executives (ACHE), Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE), where she serves on the national committee. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, eating her mom’s home-cooked Haitian food with her family and teaching tap dance and life skills to young girls from underserved communities.

Nathalie extended bio and recent prior projects: 

• Performance tracking for over 50 physician groups and program partners: downstream revenue, utilization, program/service effectiveness. Inpatient and Outpatient departmental goal-setting and strategic plan alignment.  Implemented the organization’s first digital patient rounding tool with an external vendor. Collaborated with the Chief Quality Officer in managing six teams through the rewriting process for our South Carolina Governor’s Quality Award application through the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program resulting in advancement from Bronze to Gold. 

• Conducted gap analyses of US News and World Report results for the 10 specialties of the Children’s Hospital and presented our Children’s Hospital leadership with opportunities for improvement worth an average of five increased rank standings per specialty. 

• RFP management and submission with 100% contract award success. 

• Managed four teams consisting of clinical services and facilities team members for quality and safety improvements that span four units of the Institute of Psychiatry with costs of $1M+. 

Neil Sambol (Head of Engineering): Neil is an accomplished, hands-on engineering executive with a history of success. Neil has been passionate about technology since the age of 6, and has 30+ years experience as a professional Engineer / Manager / Technology Leader, with the skills to build a great team, tech stack and product. Neil left a engineering leadership role at Vroom in August 2021 to join MedHaul.  Neil has always been interested in computer software which drew him to his undergraduate degree in computer science from Iona College, New Rochelle, NY.  After graduation, Neil tried on several hats working as a physical therapy aide for several years at Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, NY.  Neil also has a Master's Degree in Theology from Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Neil went back to his true love of technology, working for various telecommunications companies as a software engineer.  At SPIDynamics (later acq’d by HP), an Atlanta-based technology security startup, Neil tried on the technical manager hat for the first time, enjoying it immensely.

Eventually, Neil accepted the role of Director of Engineering for Amplify Learning, a Brooklyn-based mobile education technology startup.  Several years later while Vice President of Engineering at CallMax (later acq’d by MRI Software), an Atlanta-based startup, Neil realized that the startup space was where he liked to work, learn, and grow the best.

Neil’s extended bio and recent prior projects: 

2020 - Neil’s cross-functional development team integrated OTG’s proprietary point-of-sale infrastructure with Square and released a mobile app in 8 weeks – click for article.

2017 - As VP of Engineering at CallMaX, Neil met with 20+ equity funds detailing architecture and infrastructure – the company was sold 9 months later.

2020 - Migrated OTG from legacy stack of on-prem Java, PHP, Perl, Obj-C to modern cloud-based Python, Node, React, React Native with microservices in Docker, with K8s.

2016 - At CallMaX, Neil met with numerous customers, built up a user focus group, and mined it for new ideas resulting in new features and products which his team implemented.

2019 - At SmileDirectClub developed a HIPPA and GDPR compliant data platform on Snowflake/S3 to expedite SDC’s expansion into foreign markets.

2012 – 2015 - Hired and managed over 40 developers, architects, product owners, and managers for the NYC team at Amplify and had less than 5% attrition over 3.5 years.

2018 - At CallMaX, Neil’s team delivered extensive and simultaneous iOS / Android / Web complete rebrand on time with minimal team and few defects.

2012 - 2015 - Neil was given increasing responsibilities at Amplify -- he was promoted from Director to Senior Director to Exec Director -- then responsible for the entire Atlanta office.

We are hoping that the Solve community can help us scale with efficiency and positive impact. We need additional help: 

-- Introductions to health systems, payors and pharma companies that serve vulnerable populations or patients who have issues accessing care 

-- Analyzing gaps on our time and recruiting the best people (we currently have needs for Sales, Business Dev/Partnerships, Engineering, and Customer Success) 

-- Identifying good fit capital partners. Preferably strategic healthcare investors or philanthropic venture capital

-- Refining our business model and better understanding our unit economics

A major area we need help is making the community aware. Not many healthcare organizations understand the impact of transportation as a social determinant of health. As such, it can be difficult to demonstrate how adopting transportation solutions for their patients pays off both financially (i.e. fewer no-show appointments) AND clinically (improved patient health outcomes).This funding will allow MedHaul to fund rides to better measure how transportation can impact health outcomes in specific clinical contexts. 

MedHaul is also passionate about addressing health disparities in communities of color. In the U.S., African Americans often face poorer health outcomes in many clinical areas. Below are a few of the health disparities MedHaul is looking to address through expanding access to transportation.
-- African American maternal health
African American women are 3-4x more likely to die of pregnancy related complications than white women

-- Cancer Survival rates among African Americans
African Americans have the highest death rate and shortest survival for most cancers. For example, African American women are 41% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women.

MedHaul is led by an African American women and the leadership is diverse across race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status. 

MedHaul has undergone the rigorous B Lab certification process to publicly display our commitment to people, planet, and purpose. As for Diversity, Equity and and Inclusion efforts, we enforced following policies: 

---NO DISCRIMINATION EVER: MedHaul will always actively enforce a policy of 100% zero tolerance for bullying and/or discrimination against race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, gender, age, parental status, physical appearance/body size, marital status, accent, education, and many others. 

---INCLUSION: Employing those that are either familiar with the complexities of many impoverished communities or are willing to learn. MedHaul has a major focus on closing health literacy gaps, but also socioeconomic literacy gaps

Additionally, MedHaul is committed to targeting communities and demographics that are often overlooked which include: low-income, elderly, chronically ill, and those with physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities. We are also committed to hiring from these same communities, so that our team reflects and have similar shared experiences as the communities we serve. 

We currently have two business models: 

B2B subscription; we charge healthcare providers a flat monthly rate, based on a set number of rides. We also have additional upsells that we will offer customers that include implementation services, training, and advanced reporting. 

Transaction based; organization charged per ride with admin included in the cost. We also have additional upsells that we will offer customers that include implementation services, training, and advanced reporting. 

MedHaul will becoming financially stable through multiple avenues, via raising investment capital, and grants. 

To date we have already raised $1.6M through healthcare and social impact venture capital and grants. 

Hyde Foundation (non-dilutive)20,000.00GrantEpicenter Memphis25,000.00SAFEInnova Memphis25,000.00SAFEEpicenter Memphis25,000.00Grant1863 Ventures10,000.00GrantNew Voices5,000.00GrantStartup Health20,000.00SAFEInnova225,000.00EquityLaunchTN150,000.00EquityMorgan Stanley200,000.00EquityNBMBAA (non-dilutive)5,000.00GrantGoogle for Startups (non-dilutive)50,000.00GrantCiti Ventures250,000.00EquitySilicon Valley Social Venture Fund50,000.00EquityChandna Foundation30,000.00EquityEddie & Liz Medina10,000.00EquityOutlander Labs (Paige Craig)200,000.00Equity1863 Ventures20,000.00Equity50,000.00Convertible DebtInnova Follow On25,000.00Convertible DebtAngel - Follow On25,000.00Convertible DebtBCBS Massachusettes150,000.00Convertible Debt1863 - Follow On65,000.00Convertible Debt