How Ryde Ensured Reliable, Cost-Efficient Transportation for 24/7 Healthcare Operations
- -22%
- Cost per employee per month
- 19% to 11%
- Night-shift no-show reduction
- 98%
- On-time arrival rate
Challenge
A multi-site healthcare network operating rotating shifts for clinical and support staff across hospital and outpatient sites in central Israel faced mounting transportation costs and a staff-retention problem linked to commute quality. The network employed 4,200 staff across one main hospital campus, two satellite clinics, and an administrative center. Nurses, lab technicians, and support staff rotated through three shifts: morning (06:30-14:30), afternoon (14:30-22:30), and night (22:30-06:30). The transportation setup had grown organically over a decade. Nine shuttle lines served the main campus, contracted through two fleet vendors on separate agreements with different pricing structures. The satellite clinics and admin center had no shuttle service at all; staff at those sites drove personal vehicles or arranged informal carpools. Two issues drove the decision to change. First, the night shift had a 19% no-show rate, and exit interviews consistently cited commute difficulty as a top-three reason for leaving. Public transit to the main campus stopped running at 23:00, leaving night-shift workers dependent on personal cars or expensive taxi rides. Second, total transportation spend across the network was NIS 6.5M per year, but the finance team could not break costs down by department, shift, or site because each vendor reported differently.
Solution
RYDE deployed its platform across all four sites over 30 days, with the main hospital campus serving as the pilot site for the first two weeks. Week 1 focused on data integration. RYDE connected to the network's workforce scheduling system (a healthcare-specific rostering platform) to ingest shift assignments, employee addresses, and site allocations. The two existing fleet-vendor contracts were retained, but RYDE became the unified dispatch and reporting layer. For the first time, the transportation manager had a single view of all shuttle operations, costs, and ridership across both vendors. Week 2 launched the pilot at the main campus. RYDE's routing engine analyzed three months of shift data and proposed consolidating the nine lines into seven, with two of the seven converted to dynamic dispatch for the night shift. The night-shift dynamic lines only dispatched when at least eight riders confirmed via the passenger app by 21:00. This replaced the fixed 45-seat buses that had been running at 35% occupancy during night hours. Weeks 3-4 extended coverage to the satellite clinics and admin center. RYDE added four new shuttle lines to these previously unserved sites, using 16-seat vehicles on dynamic dispatch. Staff at the satellite clinics, who had never had employer-provided transportation, received the passenger app and onboarding sessions during shift handoff meetings. The network's transportation manager and a part-time operations assistant managed the platform day-to-day. RYDE's account manager held weekly check-ins for the first 60 days, then moved to monthly reviews.
Result
After the first full quarter, the healthcare network recorded measurable improvements across cost and staff retention. Transportation cost per employee per month dropped 22%, from NIS 129 to NIS 101, driven by route consolidation at the main campus and right-sized vehicles on night-shift lines. Total annualized spend fell from NIS 6.5M to NIS 5.1M. The finance team, for the first time, could see cost breakdowns by department and shift, which revealed that the surgical department's transportation cost per head was 2.3x the network average due to irregular shift extensions. Night-shift attendance improved significantly. The no-show rate dropped from 19% to 11% within 90 days. HR attributed the improvement to two factors: reliable shuttle service removed the commute barrier, and the confirmation-based dispatch meant that employees who did confirm were virtually guaranteed an on-time pickup. On-time arrivals across the network reached 98%, up from 89%. The night shift saw the largest gain, from 76% to 97%, because the dynamic dispatch eliminated the problem of fixed buses sitting empty at scheduled stops while confirmed riders waited at different locations. The satellite clinics reported the highest employee satisfaction lift. Staff who previously had no shuttle option rated the new service 4.6 out of 5 in a pulse survey conducted 8 weeks after launch. Several clinical managers noted that recruiting for satellite-clinic positions became easier once the transportation benefit was part of the job posting. One area of friction: the night-shift confirmation deadline of 21:00 initially caused complaints from staff who learned about shift assignments after that time. The team adjusted the cutoff to 22:00 and added a late-confirmation overflow vehicle, which resolved the issue by week 5. Next steps: the network is planning to extend shuttle coverage to a fifth outpatient site opening in 2026 and is evaluating RYDE's carpool-matching module to offer an alternative for low-density routes where shuttle economics are marginal.