Photography: [mark matson]

Regular trips to the primary care doctor are a fact of life for Gladys Shaw, but the 81-year-old widow doesn’t always feel up to driving herself to the clinic. At those times, she relies on a medical transportation service called Comfort Care Transportation.

“If I don’t feel I can drive comfortably or safely, that’s when I will call the car service,” said Shaw, who spent nearly 20 years as a food service employee for the Austin Independent School District and federally funded Head Start programs. “I’ve been very happy with the way the drivers treat me. They are all courteous and nice.”

Shaw is a patient of the WellMed Senior Clinic at Midtown on Jefferson Avenue. As an enrolled Medicare Advantage plan member of Physicians Health Choice, Shaw is eligible for several no-cost trips to medical appointments, including specialist referrals, lab tests and even prescription pick-up.

The service is one way WellMed is working to change the face of health care delivery for seniors, said Dr. Josef Holme, practicing physician of WellMed Senior Clinic at Ben White.

“Reliable transportation is a real problem for many of our patients,” said Holme, who is board certified in family medicine. “I can’t help patients if I can’t see them, so Comfort Care provides physicians like me with a major advantage by removing a barrier to quality preventive care.”

Comfort Care Transportation started as a medical transportation service with two vehicles in San Antonio, Texas. In 2002, WellMed purchased the company and in recent years, started expanding it into markets where WellMed serves seniors, including Austin, Corpus Christi, the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso and the Treasure Coast of Florida.

Comfort Care currently has 16 employees in Austin and operates 15 vehicles, including two vans specially equipped for wheelchair patients. Overall, there are more than 100 vehicles in the fleet, and most are no more than a year old.

As part of WellMed’s efforts to be environmentally friendly, all new Comfort Care vehicles for ambulatory patients – those able to enter and exit a vehicle on their own – will be the eco-friendly Honda Fit, which gets up to 35 highway miles per gallon.

Drivers go through several days of observation and training with a Comfort Care supervisor before they are allowed to go solo. That training includes learning about the particular needs of seniors, such as temperature control, wheelchair assistance, music choice and more.

Drivers provide door-to-door service, taking patients from their front steps into the clinic or doctor’s office. The courtesy is often essential for seniors trying to navigate their first visit to a doctor in a large office building.

For 59-year-old John M. Gomez, the service is a blessing when his late-model pickup truck is having transmission or brake problems. He and his wife, Mariann, have diabetes and go to the WellMed Senior Clinic at Ben White about three times a week.

“Some days, we need help getting in and out of the vehicle because our legs are weak,” Gomez said. “The Comfort Care drivers are great. They come to the door and walk us to the car, and then they walk us into the clinic, too.

“They treat us well. They treat us like family.”

That sentiment is common among Comfort Care patients. Drivers have to meet certain criteria before being hired, such as being able to lift 100 pounds, but a major plus is the ability to relate to patients.

“We’re not taxi drivers who take people from point A to point B,” said James Medford, a Comfort Care supervisor in Austin. “There’s a real focus on customer service geared toward seniors. For some of our passengers, a trip in a Comfort Care vehicle is the first time in a week or more that they have gotten out of the house. The driver may be the first person they’ve talked to face-to-face in a while.

“We hire people who are not only conscientious and safe drivers, but who can also give off a personable, likable quality that puts people at ease.”

Patients like Shaw and Gomez have helped Comfort Care Transportation approach a major milestone in the Austin market. In the next few weeks, the company will surpass one million miles of patient transports in the Austin area.

That’s an impressive feat for a company that entered the market just four years ago, said Jill Finnie, vice president of business ventures for WellMed. In February, the company logged patient transports just shy of 1,800. In July, Comfort Care vehicles completed nearly 2,100 transports.

“Our service is becoming more and more popular in Austin,” Finnie said. “The number keeps growing. It’s easy to see why we’re so close to passing one million miles.”

To mark the occasion, Comfort Care and WellMed are launching a campaign to educate passengers about a special honor for the rider in the vehicle that logs the millionth mile. The Million Mile Rider gets to choose an Austin-area non-profit charity that will receive a $1,500 donation from Comfort Care Transportation. A similar campaign is planned for Comfort Care in San Antonio, where the company will soon surpass 10 million miles of patient transports.

For more information about WellMed and Comfort Care Transportation, please visit www.wellmedmedicalgroup.com.