Can you believe it—2016 is almost over, and we’re taking some well-deserved time to reflect on our first full operational year. We’d like to share some our favorite highlights with you, so you can see how we’re truly changing healthcare logistics—one trip at a time…

No. 1 > WE LAUNCHED OUR PROVIDER PORTAL 2.0

This is one of our Product Team’s biggest hurrahs last quarter. On Aug 15th, we launched an update to the Provider Portal (or Provider Portal 2.0, as we call it) for our providers in four markets: California, Idaho, Texas and Michigan. This was a great eye-opening experience for us. Provider Portal 1.0 had all the cool capabilities, but did not necessarily fit in with how providers in one of our biggest markets managed their Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) workflow. Feedback from our providers after our initial launch on July 1st in Idaho alerted us to two things: one, the portal wasn’t fast enough. It took too long to load and needed to be faster. Two, providers wanted a simplified experience: less clicks and less steps. The feedback we received from our providers gave us a great chance to make a few tweaks to the portal, and we knew that our end-users had to be part of the solution.

To understand the full breadth of the issue, we created a customer advisory panel that included providers from each market. The panel would help us fully understand the issues, and would be involved in the discussion of the iterations we made to complete the solution. We believe in the power of user experience. To really solve a problem, you have to listen—really listen—and be empathetic. You can’t reduce your users complaints to “user error” or the like. You have to discover the “why” and the “how” behind their concerns. You have to listen, make changes, glean more feedback and iterate—iterate, then iterate some more. Which is exactly what our Product Team did.

“We used a new user experience-testing service to gain user insights and run usability tests,” explained Swarupa Ellamaraju, Senior Product Manager at Veyo. “We made our providers an integral part of the experience and of the solutions,” she went on. “We ran multiple internal and customer usability tests to develop a better experience and to address key pain points.  Two weeks after the launch, when we introduced the provider portal v2 in a new market to a new set of providers, we did not receive a single “how-to” question. This was very rewarding. We went from “This is sort of confusing” to “Oh, this is quite easy to use” in less than six weeks. This was a great collaborative effort between our customers and our Product, Development, Test, and User Experience teams. Having no complaints and negligible learning time goes a long way to proving the success of our iterations.”

After listening to our providers, our first battle to overcome was the portal’s speed. We needed to go from tortoise speed… to warp speed. Upon dissecting the speed issues, Swarupa and the team determined that the Capacity Chart—a feature that wasn’t key to the process—and the amount of manual clicks and data entry required, was causing the system to be slow. To fix this big area of friction for our provider portal users, we decided to remove the Capacity Chart from the homepage.

The issue relating to the number of manual clicks and data entry was resolved by adding two special features. First, we started pre-filling some information ahead of time to eliminate the need for providers to update hundreds of trips a day. This not only improved speed, but it also helped fast-track the billing process for our providers. Second, we improved the billing process and payment transparency to help providers understand their remittances and billing outcomes. Simpler payment information means less clicking around to find information.

In addition to those changes, the following updates were also included in our new release:

• Easy one-click access and navigation to all major provider tasks

• Improved Portal speed – optimized for a variety of internet and browser speeds

• Better screen usage – removed Capacity Charts/product tabs and placed more relevant items front and center
  

• Overall more intuitive User Interface for easier onboarding

• Trips grouped by same day journey: Now providers can accept/decline all trip legs

• New and Improved payment history: Now it’s easier to reconcile rewards, make adjustments to a trip, filter by payment date, and see when payments were made and for how much

• The Member Auto-Accept feature allows providers to auto-accept recurring trips

No. 2 > WE RELEASED A NEW VEYO DRIVER-PROVIDER APP

Our Driver-Provider App—which is utilized by our Independent Driver-Providers (IDPs)—is one of the most unique differentiating factors that sets the Veyo Model apart from other antiquated NEMT providers. Although some healthcare logistics enterprises may claim that they too have a Driver App—nothing compares to the functionality of our app. Our app doesn’t just tell an IDP where to go, it’s a pivotal part of the signup process, credentialing process, and account management process.

Veyo’s Web and mobile app-based driver-provider tools guide third-party commercial transportation providers and IDPs (together they comprise the industry’s first scalable Virtual Fleet™) through the onboarding and credentialing process when they first join the Fleet. These modern in-app tools allow driver-providers to upload their necessary documents, such as insurance or licensing forms, within minutes—all without visiting an office. Once the documents have been uploaded successfully, our San Diego-based Command Center verifies and checks all documents for accuracy, and conducts a thorough background check on each applicant. Because all of our record checks and documents are stored digitally, our system is always up to date on expiration dates and can send out an automated reminder to upload renewed documents, deactivate a driver-provider who is missing a document or whose vehicle has credentials that have lapsed, and monitor driver-provider behavior and performance in real-time.

The Veyo System – the brains behind this whole thing – uses the Veyo Driver-Provider App to track the location of all driver-providers in the Veyo Virtual Fleet network, and provides our Command Center team with real-time information about available supply, locations of individual driver-providers, and the status of every trip. Our Driver-Provider App allows Veyo to see an exact record of every trip. By capturing granular details of every trip (which provider was assigned to the trip; how many times they called the member; routes taken; etc.) we create a data “powerhouse” full of insights that all help guide Veyo to be more efficient. Our Command Center uses this information to monitor for fraud, waste, and abuse, research grievances, and automatically pay providers and driver-providers weekly for every trip by ACH. With our app, providers effortlessly achieve a higher standard of automation, simplification, and stability which allows them to focus on quality and reliability. This all puts the focus where it belongs: on getting Medicaid and Medicare members to their appointments.

James Ho, Product Manager here at Veyo, took a few moments to explain why we decided to redesign the app, and how we approached it as well as completed the project under a tight four-month timeline.

“Our main reason for redesigning the Driver App was to refresh the branding. Our old app, though revolutionary for its time, still lived under our old branding when we were coined 2pointB. Our new style is noticeably better,” said Ho, laughing. “It’s so much more modern, brighter, more intuitive. I mean, it’s just better all around.” Ho and his team used their four-month timeline to really understand what the app needed to be successful for users. This included preliminary user testing and usability testing, as well as beta testing with actual driver-providers.

“The beta testing was so successful,” Ho noted. “We had about 50 beta testers on each platform, about 100 testers total—using iOS and Android. They loved the app so much, they must’ve told their friends, because by the end of our beta period, we had an additional 150 users using the app… and we never formally announced its’ beta launch.”

New features abounded with this big Driver-Provider App update. Driver-providers can now experience dynamic hot spots when using the app (letting them know where we need more vehicles), better communicate with members, view detailed trip maps, utilize GPS-tracking, and figure out where they need to go by utilizing turn-by-turn routing directions.

Plus, now drivers can also:

• View detailed trip history
• Update and upload credentialing or training docs from the comfort of their home, anywhere, anytime
• Update their banking and contact info anywhere, anytime

No. 3 > THE VIRTUAL FLEET MODEL PROVIDED OVER 2-MILLION TRIPS NATIONWIDE

We’ll be honest… we saw the numbers inching forward, but when we passed the one-millionth trip marker, we chose not to initiate blastoff of the confetti-maker machine quite yet. Yes: One million trips completed was impressive, but we thought we could make it to the two-millionth marker within our first full year—and dang: we did it (and we’re almost at three million!). Now, providing trips is one thing. But did we provide trips that increased member satisfaction? Yes. Did we provide trips that reduced FWA (fraud waste and abuse)? Yes.

Here’s a rundown of some of our favorite stats:

1. Driver Onboarding & Veyo’s Independent Driver-Providers—Within the first ten months of launching Veyo in Arizona, our IDP fleet completed more than 1,028,000 trips, with an average of 7,500 trips per day in Phoenix and Tucson. Most importantly, in that short time, we were able to onboard more than 1,800 active IDP-providers, as well as get 1,000 driver-providers in the recruitment funnel. These numbers have grown exponentially over the course of our first full year and they continue to grow.

2. Veyo’s Trip Request Match-Time Results—Upon launching in our Arizona market, the average time required to match a trip request with the appropriate driver was just over five minutes. We were able to optimize trip-matching capabilities with our predictive analytics, and reduce the driver-member trip match from five minutes to a mere 28 seconds, on-average.

3. An overall grievance rate of just 0.03% and just 0.018% for our IDP Fleet—After completing approximately 1,028,000 trips in Tucson and Phoenix areas, Veyo’s IDP fleet received only 195 complaints, 100-times lower than industry averages. In addition, of those 195 complaints, only 76 were substantiated grievances.

No. 4 > WE LAUNCHED OUR FIRST STATEWIDE CONTRACT IN IDAHO

In April of this year, Veyo was chosen as the official broker of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) to serve over 300,000 Idaho Medicaid-eligible participants statewide. We launched on July 1st with a fleet of over 100 local transportation providers and our independent driver-providers.

“With our strong network of both commercial providers and independent driver-providers, we’ve delivered more than 200,000 trips successfully in the state,” noted Shannon Frank, Director of Market Strategy and Operations. “Our regional office on the ground in Idaho employs about 15 employees in Boise. Plus, our IDP Model is going really well—we’re gaining a lot of interest from local citizens looking to supplement their income by becoming a Veyo driver. They’re excited to do more than just provide a trip; they love feeling like they’re making a difference.”

No. 5 > CHECK OUT WHAT THE PRESS HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT US!

We’ve been excited to see and hear all the chatter about Veyo exploding online and in the news. And we’d love to share that news with you, so you can see what the world is saying about us. We feel it’s important to get that ‘unfiltered’ perspective about what makes us tick. So, without further adieu, here are few our of our favorite top news stories:

• San Diego Magazine: Downtown Buzz!
• San Diego Union Tribune: Veyo Brings Ride-Hailing Tech to San Diego
• AZ Tech Beat: Veyo’s Hiring 1,200 Drivers