Lyft partners with home care group to help seniors access ridesharing service

By Bruce Brown Published September 1, 2016

lyft home care assistance seniors support — Spiros Vathis/Flickr

Bay Area senior citizens without smartphones can now use Lyft’s ridesharing service. Home Care Assistance partnered with Lyft so seniors can make a conventional telephone call to initiate a Lyft pickup.

According to Pew Research Center, 70 percent of U.S. adults 65 or older don’t have access to smartphones. And some of those who do have smartphones aren’t able to use all the features available. Bottom line, if people can’t open the Lyft app, join the service, and figure out how to hail rides, they lose out on that transportation option. Under that scenario, the rideshare company also misses out on what could be a sizable market.

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Home Care Assistance specializes in “high-touch solutions” to high-tech problems, with a focus on helping senior adults. With its partnership with Lyft, seniors who prefer to talk with a person rather than engage via app screens can call a Home Care Assistance number and speak with someone who will help arrange a Lyft ride.

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“I’m delighted that this partnership allows our organizations to expand consumer offerings while making a meaningful difference in the lives of older adults,” said Home Care Assistance CEO Lily Sarafan. “Seamless, affordable transportation remains one of the key challenges for our rapidly aging population and Home Care Assistance and Lyft have the infrastructure, scale, and expertise to remove the barriers necessary to address it head on.”

“Lyft is focused on connecting people and their communities through effective transportation, and knowing many older adults enjoy exercising their independence, our work with Home Care Assistance is focused on keeping this specific community — and their caregivers — mobile,” said Gyre Renwick, Lyft’s Head of Healthcare Enterprise Partnerships.

Going forward, the plan is to expand the partnership program with Lyft to all of the 150 markets Home Care Assistance serves in the U.S.

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Bruce Brown Contributing Editor As a Contributing Editor to the Auto teams at Digital Trends and TheManual.com, Bruce…

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