Residents of Ascension Living communities will be among those who will be able to arrange for rides under a new partnership between parent company Ascension and on-demand transportation company Lyft.
The agreement, announced Tuesday, will make nonemergency transportation services available to those facing transportation barriers. The service is expected to be rolled out across many of Ascension’s 2,500 sites of care, including 141 hospitals, in 24 states and Washington, D.C., over the next several months.
“We worked closely with our care providers and operational leaders to find the right partner to provide nonemergency transportation services for those we serve,” said Michael Gray, chief operating officer of the Resource Group, a subsidiary of Ascension. “We selected Lyft because it best meets our important requirements of convenience, customer support and service, and market flexibility across many of the communities we are blessed to serve.”
Ascension is headquartered in St. Louis. Ascension Living has 28 communities in Washington, D.C., and 11 states, with its largest presence in Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee.
Lyft is pilot-testing its ride-hailing services at a Brookdale Senior Living community in California as well as at nine Sunshine Retirement Living communities across three states. The company also is testing its service in select markets where older adults use Jitterbug phones by Great Call.
As with the pilot with Sunshine, the Ascension partnership with Lyft will use Lyft’s Concierge tool to order rides for seniors who don’t owe smartphones.
