“We know one thing with certainty—Rosary Hall’s intensive outpatient treatment program works,” said Dr. Ted Parran, associate medical director of Rosary Hall. “For so many of our addiction patients, financial challenges and a means of reliable transportation present major obstacles, which often cause a patient to relapse or drop out of their recovery program.”

St. Vincent Charity Medical Center’s new pilot program provided patients in Rosary Hall’s Intensive Outpatient Treatment Program with no-cost, individualized transportation through Uber for all assessments and treatment sessions.

The program is a partnership with Circulation, a Boston-based startup which was the first to launch a digital transportation platform that integrates health systems with Uber’s driver network for non-emergency transportation. St. Vincent Charity is the first hospital in the nation to utilize the technology for addiction treatment.

The transportation program was featured on the front page of Crains Cleveland Business, on Cleveland Channel 19 WOIO, Modern HealthCare and The Fix, the world’s leading website about addiction and recovery. 

“This is a life and death situation. We can’t do this on our own”

For patients like Angela, 33, who has been battling her addiction since the age of 10 and recently completed her 5-week IOP at Rosary Hall, this transportation program is the critical lifeline that so many patients desperately need.

“This is a life and death situation,” Angela said in an interview with Cleveland’s Channel 19.  “When we are in addiction, we lose a lot of things.  Most of us don’t have licenses.  Most don’t have cars.  We can’t do this on our own.”

This, combined with the challenges of public transportation, including costing patients up to $25 per week in bus fare, requiring countless hours in transport time, and exposing patients to multiple relapse triggers along the way, present the single largest barrier for patients in addiction treatment.

“This program removes that hurdle and gets our patients quickly to where they need to be, when they need to be there, at no cost to them, and without all of the temptations along the way,” said Orlando Howard, Rosary Hall’s manager of outpatient treatment services.

St. Vincent Charity is quickly seeing the impact of the program for its patients. Since launching in mid-June, 15 patients have enrolled in the program and have scheduled 256 rides, totaling 1,700 miles, to St. Vincent Charity for patient assessments and treatment appointments.  Participating patients maintain a 100 percent attendance rate for all assessment and treatment appointments.  In the 30 days prior to launching the transportation program, Rosary Hall had an almost 25 percent no-show rate for IOP treatment and nearly 40 percent no-show rate for individual counseling sessions.

The pilot program is being supported through a $45,000 grant from the Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Cuyahoga County. To read more about the Uber transportation program, visit the St. Vincent Charity website.