Every year, thousands of patients miss their scheduled appointments at community health centers in Vermont, many of them because they have no way to get there. Other people do not even schedule appointments that they need because of the transportation barriers they face. The Rides to Wellness program seeks to lower these transportation barriers and make sure that, in the future, lack of transportation will no longer be a reason that people fail to get health care when they need it.
The Rides to Wellness program has three primary goals:
- To improve health outcomes for the vulnerable populations that use community health centers
- To improve financial performance for health centers, hospitals and funding programs (such as Medicaid) by reducing missed appointments
- To reduce the use of emergency services, thereby saving additional resources.
Resources
The Rides to Wellness Implementation Plan describes how the program was developed and the key components.
Rides to Wellness Success Story
Roadmaps
The Roadmaps are intended to be a tool for staff at health centers to guide patients to the transportation resources available to them.
St. Johnsbury Roadmap
Windsor Community Health Center Roadmap
Ottauquechee Health Center Roadmap
Posters
The project prepared posters for the partners in the region, to help get the word out to patients who need transportation assistance. The posters instruct people to dial 2-1-1 for assistance. Poster examples are linked below, but there are similar posters for Northeast Kingdom Human Services and other partners in both pilot areas.
Windsor area poster
Northern Counties Health Care poster
Expansion
These pilot regions are intended to be models for the rest of Vermont. If you are interested in beginning a Rides to Wellness program in your region, you can call VTrans and speak with Timothy Bradshaw at 802-461-5310.