The Past, Present, and Future of Mobility — And Why It Matters More Than Ever

Indiana … the past, present and future of transportation for the mobility challenged!

360 Quality Care + Transport Services was honored to be one of only about forty vendors and partners (and one of only twelve non-emergency medical transportation providers) in the nation to be specially invited to attend the BraunAbility Mobility Champions Symposium in Indiana this week. The event was co-hosted by The Transportation Alliance.

While the conference was an opportunity to discuss technology, safety, and comfort improvements in future vehicle designs, we also looked back on the history of NEMT and got to tour today’s largest production line of wheelchair accessible vehicles.

The event kicked off with an up close and personal discussion with veteran Indy car driver, Sam Schmidt. Sam talked about the accident that left him a quadriplegic in 2000, and how that life changing event led to him creating a foundation that now owns the Driven NeuroRecover Center, a 130,000 square foot acute neuro rehabilitation facility that provides state-of-the-art outpatient rehabilitation for catastrophic injury and other neuro injury survivors - regardless of their ability to pay.

Truly inspirational!

Then we visited Winamac IN, where we learned how Ralph Braun turned a teenage diagnosis of Spinal Muscular Atrophy into a personal challenge to design and build the world’s first electric powered wheelchair. That led to him purchasing a post office mail van that he converted into the world’s first wheelchair van.

Soon after, he combined the two ideas into building the largest wheelchair vehicle conversion company in the world, now producing more than 70 ADA compliant wheelchair vans each day.

The Symposium wrapped up with meetings centered around safety, comfort, technology, and efficiency designs and resources for the future - from next generation EVs to resources and tools that will introduce industry leading, improved wheelchair securement and safety procedures, and far more.

With a healthy dose of industry history and education behind us, we then visited the world renowned Indianapolis Speedway to watch this year’s Indianapolis 500 time trials where we were hosted by BraunAbility in a box overlooking Sam Schmidt’s Arrow McLaren racing team.

Truly a full circle snapshot in time as the past, the present, and the future - all merged into a hugely entertaining experience of a lifetime at the racetrack.

We had access to pit row and we listened in at the team garage as team crews made miniscule repairs to improve their car’s performance by fractions of a second in order to win.

Nothing emphasizes just how important attention to even the tiniest details make in the difference between finishing first and being an also ran.

It’s that spirit of innovation, quality, attention to detail, and willingness to make even the tiny improvements necessary to be the very best in the world that drive BraunAbility, get carried forward by The Transportation Alliance, and implemented by 360 Quality Care + Transportation and other NEMTAC accredited providers that truly set us apart from others.

There are too many names to thank in one post, but special thanks to everyone who hosted, attended, collaborated, and openly shared their best practices with 360 over the last two days.

The teamwork we witnessed at both the BraunAbility facilities we toured and the Arrow teams we watched at the racetrack, have added whole new depth and meaning to the "Team 360" concept we have developed internally to build and sustain our own unique culture.

To Sam and Ralph - thank you for your inspiration and your leadership. And thank you for making a difference.

What a week!