Wheelchair Accessible Transportation to Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center

Before anything else: there are two hospitals in this area called St. Luke’s, and they are not near each other. Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center is at 2900 W. Oklahoma Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53215, on the near South Side at 27th and Oklahoma. Aurora St. Luke’s South Shore is a separate hospital in Cudahy. People mix them up when they book. It is a long, expensive detour to fix on the morning of a procedure, so check the top of your appointment letter now rather than in the van.

Tell us which one and which building when you book, and the trip gets planned to that door. Or call 414-716-1212 and we’ll work it out with you.

The campus is a hospital plus two office buildings

“St. Luke’s” on a letter can mean the hospital itself or one of the medical office buildings beside it. The wayfinding guide treats the hospital main entrance, Medical Office Building 1 and Medical Office Building 3 as three separate destinations, because that is what they are. A clinic appointment in MOB 3 is not at the hospital front door, and a rider in a power chair should not be discovering that from the sidewalk.

Much of what happens here is cardiac and vascular. The campus holds the Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center, anticoagulation clinics, and the Tendick Center for the Surgical Treatment of Heart Failure and Transplant Centers, among others. That shapes the rides: a lot of them are older adults recovering from heart surgery, and a lot of them repeat.

If your letter names a building, give us the building. If it just says St. Luke’s, the hospital’s main number is 414-649-6000 and the clinic can tell you in about a minute which door you want.

Three parking structures, and none of them is your drop-off

There is a parking garage off S. 27th Street, a West Structure on the Oklahoma Avenue side, and valet at Medical Office Building 1. Useful to know if a family member is driving separately and meeting you inside. Less useful for the ride itself, because a wheelchair ramp needs level, cleared ground at a patient entrance, not a spiral deck.

So when you book, the detail that matters is the entrance, not the parking. If you have used the campus before and know which door worked, say so — that is better information than anything a map gives us.

One timing note worth having: visiting hours run 5 AM to 9 PM, and the wayfinding guide flags that at least one entrance is locked between 9 PM and 5 AM. For a late evening discharge or a pre-dawn surgical check-in, confirm with the unit which door will actually be open before you set a pickup time. We would rather build that into the booking than have a driver and a rider standing at a locked door at 4:40 AM.

Cardiac rehab is a schedule, not an appointment

This is the part most transportation pages miss, and it is the reason a lot of South Side families end up calling us.

Outpatient cardiac rehabilitation at St. Luke’s runs two to three days a week, with sessions built around 30 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise plus strength training and stretching. The peripheral artery disease rehab program is similar — one-hour group sessions, two to three days a week, for up to 12 weeks. The cardiac rehab number is 414-649-6039.

Do the arithmetic and it is something like twenty-four to thirty-six round trips over three months, on fixed weekday class times, for someone who has just had heart surgery and is not driving. Families usually try to cover it themselves for the first two weeks. Then somebody has to keep taking mornings off work, and it stops being sustainable right around the point where the program actually starts to work.

Book it as a standing order instead. Give us the class days and times once and the rides get set up as a block rather than twenty-eight separate phone calls. If the class time changes, tell us once and the block moves. Same approach we use for dialysis riders, for the same reason: a treatment schedule that does not move should not need a booking decision every other day.

There is more detail in our guide to rides to cardiac rehab in Milwaukee — what Medicare pays for and what it doesn’t, why sternal precautions change which van suits you, and how to work out the handful of weeks you actually need a ride for rather than budgeting for all thirty-six.

If you live in Milwaukee County, price Transit Plus first

We would rather tell you this than have you find out later and feel sold to.

St. Luke’s is inside Milwaukee County, so Transit Plus applies: $4 each way, wheelchair accessible, anywhere in the county. Against a private fare that is not close, and if it fits your situation you should use it.

Get the right number, though. Rides are booked through Transdev at 414-817-9860, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, seven days a week. You can reserve up to seven days ahead, and the trip has to be on the books by 4:30 PM the day before — miss that and there is no standby queue for the regular van. The number you will find on most older handouts, 414-343-1700, is the eligibility and administration office. It cannot book you a ride.

The catch is the front end. Transit Plus requires an application and an in-person functional assessment before your first ride. Neither of those can be completed in the week after a bypass, which is exactly when cardiac rehab starts. The other place it gives out is the edges — anything short-notice, and any trip that has to happen at a precise time rather than inside a window.

The honest version: start the Transit Plus application early, well before you need it, and use us for the trips it cannot cover. If you want the full picture, our comparison of Milwaukee wheelchair transportation options lays out what each program covers and where each one stops.

Coming from outside the county changes the math again. Transit Plus does not leave Milwaukee County at all, so a rider in Waukesha or Racine heading to 27th and Oklahoma is looking at a private ride either way — see Waukesha County or Racine and Kenosha.

¿Prefiere leer esto en español? Tenemos una página en español para el South Side de Milwaukee.

What to tell us when you book

• Which St. Luke’s, and which building. Hospital, MOB 1 or MOB 3. Door number if your letter gives one.
• The chair. Manual, power or scooter, roughly how wide and how heavy. A power chair often runs 250 to 400 pounds empty, which narrows what will fit. Make and model is enough if you don’t know the numbers.
• Whether the rider stays in the chair or transfers to a seat with the chair stowed. Either works; it changes what gets sent.
• Steps at the home end. Three steps and no railing is worth flagging. A ramp needs somewhere level to land.
• Oxygen, a walker, a transfer board traveling along.
• Who else is coming. Most accessible vans seat one or two people alongside the wheelchair position.

Common questions

How far ahead should I book?

A day or two is comfortable and gives the widest choice of vehicle. Same-day is often possible — call rather than using the form so availability can be checked while you’re on the phone. Anything before 7 AM is the thinnest slot in the whole Milwaukee market, and this campus schedules plenty of early arrivals, so pin those down as far ahead as you can.

Can you set up a recurring block of rides?

Yes, and for rehab or dialysis it’s the right way to do it. Give us the days, the class time and the end date. You are not locked in — single dates can be canceled or moved.

Can the driver wait during a short appointment?

For something short and predictable, that can be arranged. For a longer visit it usually costs less to book the return separately. Ask when you call and we’ll tell you which works out better for that trip.

Do I need Medicaid approval or a case manager?

No. There’s no authorization step and no eligibility review. You book a ride, you get a quote before it’s confirmed, and you pay by card.

What does it cost?

It depends on distance and on what vehicle the chair needs. You’ll see the price before anything is confirmed. Our guide to what accessible transportation costs in Milwaukee explains what moves the number.

Is this the same as an ambulance?

No. These are wheelchair-accessible vans for people who are stable and going to a scheduled appointment. If a rider needs to travel lying down or with medical monitoring, that’s an ambulance call, not this.

Book a ride to St. Luke’s

Put the pickup address and the building you need into the form above for a price, or call 414-716-1212 and we’ll take the details and arrange it.

Entrances, parking and clinic locations on the St. Luke’s campus change from time to time. If your appointment letter isn’t specific about the building, confirm it with your clinic or with the hospital at 414-649-6000 before the day.