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> It is illegal for “ride shares” to provide medical transport.

Really? A couple years ago I brought my buddy to the hospital in an Uber and he was pretty close to dying, nobody at the hospital seemed to have any issues with it. I later emailed Uber to praise the driver and they thanked me for the writeup of what happened and said they distributed it on their internal listserv. Definitely did not feel like anything illegal was happening throughout process.



> A couple years ago I brought my buddy to the hospital in an Uber

In your role as on-site physician for a corporation?


> nobody at the hospital seemed to have any issues with it.

this might be because they had more important things to attend to, like your dying friend.


I don't think it is illegal, or at least I couldn't find anything saying it was. Here are three articles I found, and I'd assume at least one of them would have mentioned the legal trouble. Maybe I missed it?

    https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/when-should-you-uber-to-the-hospital-and-when-should-you-call-an-ambulance.html
    https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20170515/uber-lyft-er-trips#1
    https://www.rewire.org/living/uber-emergency-room/


It is illegal for a medical practitioner to send someone to the hospital in a non-medical transport.


As a physician, I can say that is not true


I would asume that depends on the circumstances? In an dire emergency you take the first ride you get. Otherwise I could image that there are some rules in place.


Strictly speaking, that's not true:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/03/01/doctors-...

With Uber Health, a doctor can send an Uber to pick a patient up to transport them to the doctor's office, and many doctors have offices in hospitals, so this service would then be illegal according to you, but it isn't.

What you probably meant to say is a medical practitioner can't call a non-medical transport for a patient in an emergency, which also doesn't seem true, but I can't find any articles that directly say that (why would someone write such a thing?).


It is always legal to provide help and transport, but it is often illegal to provide any treatment, and specifically avoid providing any kind of painkiller. Never. This is very important.


I wouldn't rely on Uber of all companies (esp. a few years ago) to let you know when they did something illegal…




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