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Comment by vitd | Hacker News Reader

Can you expand on what a HIPAA-compliant driver is? (I know what HIPPA is, I don't understand what that has to do with driving people around.)

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Most medical offices won't let you use regular taxis (or Uber, etc) after major procedures. They require a personal driver (family member, friend) that they can provide after-care instructions ("if his face starts bleeding, turn around immediately"). There are dedicated medical taxi services that serve this niche, typically drivers have some basic training, have easily accessible vehicles, etc.

Huh, I've never heard of that. At every ER I've ever worked at we just called a cab from the nurses station. We also hand out bus tickets to low income patients.

Thank you! I have been that driver before, so that makes complete sense. I just didn't get it out of context.

Uh, what happens if you walk out the door and hail a cab? How do they stop you?

For liability reasons, they release you to the family member or friend who then escorts you.

You are still legally allowed to 'check yourself out' which would be considered 'against medical advice', and god knows what you'd have to sign, but the point is that's not typically the way it works. You are under their care until a responsible party comes in to retrieve you.

They note that you are behaving outside medical advice, and mention that your insurance might as a result refuse to pay for the procedure.

Whether this is actually the case is a different matter, but that veiled threat should be enough for most.

This is a common meme, that your insurance might not pay for a procedure if you do something against medical advice. I've had a number of doctors claim it. It's false, thankfully.

http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2012/20120203-billing.html

A lot of times, you can't. They literally will not discharge you until you can prove you have a viable form of transportation, in the form of a friend or family member who can look after you, or a medically-trained taxi. Until you've set one up and they have released you into their care, they will not let you leave.

I don't think they'll physically stop you from walking out the door, though (that's kidnapping, in fact). But as rconti said, they'll make it very clear to you that you're leaving "against medical advice".

(I suppose they might physically restrain you if they have reason to think that you aren't mentally competent at the moment...)

> that's kidnapping, in fact

Nitpick: false imprisonment, not kidnapping (kidnapping requires movement).

HIPAA basically requires a bunch of safeguards to be in place if you fall under its regulations. So if a prescription delivery company (like ScriptDash, NimbleRX, etc) want to send a delivery person with a prescription, the driver needs to be HIPAA certified. Otherwise the company would be in massive trouble for violating HIPAA requirements.

It's not a common enough use case for Uber/Lyft's consumer facing services, so I don't think it's wise for them to get into it; they're better going after UberEATS/etc opportunities. The idea would be ridesharing for businesses who have more strict requirements, kind of like Box vs Dropbox.

FWIW, you still deal with the difficult people operations aspect of ridesharing in that case (drivers are hard to recruit and manage, and are city specific), so I'd probably go after outsourcing the logistics platform for businesses with existing delivery mechanisms. E.g. bring UPS's 'no left turns' technology to companies that can't develop it internally.

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