Sept. 24, 2019 By Allie Griffin
The nonprofit Queens Community House (QCH) will be offering seniors in need free transportation to medical appointments via a partnership with Lyft and Forest Hills Stadium, the organization announced today.
Through the partnership, the QCH’s Senior Medical Transportation Service will now provide senior residents of Queens Community Districts 4 and 6 with free transportation to and from medical appointments through Lyft’s scheduling service, Lyft Concierge.
Previously, the organization offered transportation to nearby appointments to seniors who lived in CD 6 — Forest Hills and Rego Park–and QCH covered only half the cost for those who qualified. Now, the service is free to all qualifying seniors.
The new partnership and funding from Lyft and Forest Hills Stadium has allowed QCH to offer the transportation service to seniors in CD 4, which includes Elmhurst, Corona, Lefrak City and Corona Heights. In addition, seniors can use the services to be brought to and from their home to any medical appointment throughout the city, not just Queens.
To utilize the service, seniors must be 65 or older, a resident of CD4 or CD 6 and a registered participant of QCH’s Senior Case Management Program.
Eligible seniors may use the service as much as they need at no cost, negating the previous limit of three times a month per senior.
“For a growing portion of our older population, once routine outings like going to a doctor’s appointment have become monumental challenges,” said Ben Thomases, QCH Executive Director.
“Fortunately, through our new partnership with Lyft and Forest Hills Stadium we’re able to expand our Senior Medical Transportation services to include Corona, Elmhurst and Lefrak City and reach more older adults in Queens than ever before.”
Qualifying Seniors who live in CD4 or CD6 Queens are able to get free rides to medical appointments
4 Comments
Thank you! Acess-A-Ride and the like are a joke. They’re unreliable. They’re incredibly difficult to coordinate with and their “approval” process is absurd. Anyone with disabilities or elderly already has difficulty commuting and going to their HQ for “qualification” multiple times is an arduous task.
Access A Ride is a horrible nightmare of a mess. They cannot get you to a doctor’s appointment on time. AAR must separate those going to Medical appointments from those going to their social activities. If AAR is not on time you must wait 30 minutes before calling to get picked up, this makes you miss your doctor’s appointment!!. –Think about how distressing it is standing for 30 minutes in Winter-cold waiting for that 30 minutes to pass and hoping your doctor will still see you! AAR should be based upon medical and financial needs, not Age as there are seniors who can afford a taxi but abuse AAR by treating it like their personal chauffer to their social activities, often insisting they get dropped off first.
Great service but it doesnt include how to register to become s member of QCH, which is a requirement for using the free service
So contact QCH. It’s not hard. Here, I Googled it for you, took less than a minute.
Address: 108-25 62nd Drive, Forest Hills, NY 11375. Phone: (718) 592-5757.
You’re welcome.