Medical Courier · Chattanooga & North Georgia
RX Relay TN is a dedicated-driver medical courier serving labs, physician offices, dental and specialty practices, imaging centers, dialysis clinics, pharmacies, and care facilities across Chattanooga and the North Georgia line. STAT runs when the clock is against you. Scheduled routes you can build your day around. Documented custody on every leg — including the ones that cross a state border.
What We Move
Every service line below is handled by the same courier, under the same custody procedures. Ask for a combination — most clients start with one scheduled route and add STAT coverage once they see the turnaround.
A critical draw, a re-collect, a missed pickup, a result the ordering physician needed an hour ago. Call, and a single courier is en route — no queue, no re-dispatch, no handoff to a second driver somewhere on I-75.
Time-criticalFixed daily or multi-day routes with a consistent arrival window, so your front desk knows when the cooler goes out and your lab knows when the courier arrives. Routes are built around your draw schedule and the receiving lab's cutoff, not a generic dispatch algorithm.
Recurring · ContractedBlood, serum, urine, tissue, cytology, microbiology, molecular and pathology specimens moved from collection site to reference lab. Requisitions stay with the specimen, coolers stay closed, and every transfer is logged with time and recipient.
Labs · Clinics · PathologyAmbient, refrigerated and frozen transport using validated coolers, gel packs and dry ice supplied per your protocol. Transport times are documented so your QA team can tie a result back to a defensible transport window.
Cold chainRetail, independent and compounding pharmacy deliveries to patient homes, group homes, assisted living and skilled nursing facilities. Refrigerated medications kept in cold chain, signature captured at handoff, and recipient identity confirmed where your policy requires it.
Rx · Compounded · SpecialtyUnits, components and plasma moved between draw sites, blood banks and receiving facilities under temperature control, with custody documented end to end. Coordinated directly with your blood bank supervisor on packaging and acceptance criteria.
Temperature-criticalCharts, films, releases, credentialing packets, signed orders and legal-hold records carried in locked or sealed transport. Protected health information stays out of sight, out of the passenger cabin's public view, and in the courier's control the whole way.
PHI handlingDurable medical equipment, wound care and surgical supplies, implant trays, dental cases and appliances, plus interoffice transfers between your own locations — including practices with a Tennessee office and a Georgia office.
Supply runsStudy kits out, samples back, on the timeline the protocol dictates. Site-to-lab transport for clinical research coordinators who need the collection-to-receipt interval documented rather than estimated.
Protocol-driven
The Single-Driver Advantage
Most courier problems are staffing problems. A national fleet sends whoever is on shift — a rotating bench of temps and contractors who have never been to your back door, don't know which cooler is yours, and won't be the one who shows up tomorrow. RX Relay TN was built to remove that variable entirely.
John Bogert owns the business and drives the routes. When you call, you are talking to the courier. When something changes at 6:40 a.m. — an added stop, a delayed draw, a cooler that has to go back out — you are not filing a ticket. You are telling the driver.
Compliance & Safe Handling
Your compliance officer is going to ask about these. Here are the practices RX Relay TN operates under, described plainly so you can document them in your vendor file.
Protected health information is treated as confidential from pickup to signature: PHI stays sealed or covered in transit, is never left unattended in a vehicle, and is never discussed outside the handoff. RX Relay TN will execute a Business Associate Agreement with covered entities on request, and will follow your organization's incident-reporting procedure if anything goes wrong.
BAA available on requestHandling procedures follow the principles of OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030): universal precautions, gloves and PPE available on every run, no direct handling of unpackaged specimens, a documented spill and exposure response, and a stocked spill kit carried in the vehicle.
Universal precautionsDiagnostic and clinical specimens classified as Biological Substance, Category B (UN 3373) are accepted only in the triple packaging the rule requires — leak-proof primary receptacle, leak-proof secondary containment with absorbent, rigid marked outer container — prepared and marked by the shipper per 49 CFR 173.199. John is trained on the function-specific handling and incident-response requirements for carrying this material by ground, and will refuse a package that arrives visibly compromised or unmarked rather than put it in the vehicle.
49 CFR 173.199 · P650Every leg is logged: pickup location, date and time, item or cooler count, packaging condition on receipt, transport conditions, delivery time and receiving signature. You get a delivery confirmation on request, and a retrievable record if a result is ever questioned or a specimen is ever disputed.
Documented transfersRX Relay TN carries commercial coverage appropriate to medical courier work and will provide a current certificate of insurance naming your facility for your vendor credentialing file. The vehicle is maintained on a preventive schedule, because a breakdown mid-route is a compliance event, not just an inconvenience.
COI on requestSpecimens and medications are carried at the range your protocol specifies — ambient, refrigerated, or frozen — using the packaging and coolant you validate. Transport intervals are recorded so a temperature-sensitive assay can be tied to a defensible window rather than a guess.
Ambient · 2–8°C · FrozenA note on language, because it matters in this industry: the items above describe operating practices and training, not third-party certifications or accreditations. If your credentialing process requires specific documentation, name it and RX Relay TN will tell you plainly whether it can be provided.
Who We Serve
Different buyers, same underlying fear: a specimen that has to be re-collected, a medication that arrives warm, or a run that never happened. Here is how RX Relay TN fits each one.
Feeder routes from collection sites, STAT re-collects, and courier coverage that keeps specimens inside stability windows and ahead of your instrument cutoff.
A reliable end-of-day pickup so your medical assistants stop driving specimens to the lab themselves after their shift.
Impressions, models, crowns, aligner cases and appliance returns moved between practice and lab on a schedule that protects your seat appointments.
Pathology out, results in, implant trays and instrument sets where they need to be before the first case of the day.
Films, discs, prior studies and read packets transported between imaging center, referring office and radiology group with custody documented.
Recurring lab draws and monthly panels on a fixed route, plus supply transfers between chair locations.
Vet specimens to diagnostic labs on the same documented handling standards as human clinical work — including the rural clinics out toward Chickamauga and Soddy-Daisy.
Patient-home delivery, will-call runs, facility drops and cold-chain handling for compounded and refrigerated preparations.
Comfort-kit and medication delivery, supply drops to field nurses, and specimen pickup from a patient's home where your workflow requires it.
Scheduled pharmacy cycles, lab draws back to the reference lab, and records transport for facilities across Hamilton County and Catoosa and Walker counties in Georgia.
Study-kit distribution and sample return with the collection-to-receipt interval documented for your monitor.
Interoffice courier service for groups running a Tennessee office and a Georgia office — charts, supplies, signed orders and physical transfers between the two.
Service Area
RX Relay TN is a Chattanooga tri-state specialist, not a regional fleet spread thin. That means shorter response windows, routes that actually account for I-24, I-75, Highway 153 and the Ridge Cut at rush hour, and a courier who already knows the buildings — on both sides of the state line.
Chattanooga anchors the region's clinical footprint — Erlanger's Baroness campus and Children's Hospital downtown, Erlanger East on Gunbarrel Road, CHI Memorial on Glenwood, Parkridge Medical Center, and Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation. The Hamilton Place and Shallowford Road corridor is thick with independent practices, imaging centers and labs, and RX Relay TN is based right in it on Commons Boulevard.
Four miles out, East Ridge carries Parkridge East Hospital on Spring Creek Road plus a dense run of primary care, dialysis and specialty offices along the Ringgold Road corridor. Short-hop pickups here are ideal for practices that need a same-day lab run without paying regional rates.
Lookout Mountain's small practices and home health cases get skipped by carriers that do not want the grade and the switchbacks up Scenic Highway. That is exactly the kind of stop a single dedicated courier keeps on the route rather than dropping.
Five miles south and across the state line, Rossville's clinics and pharmacies along the Chickamauga Avenue and GA-27 corridor often see couriers treat a Georgia address as an exception. Here it is a normal stop on a normal route.
Red Bank's primary care, dental and independent pharmacy addresses sit along the Dayton Boulevard corridor just north of the city. Easy to fold into a morning route toward Soddy-Daisy or an afternoon return downtown.
Eight miles up the W Road and Taft Highway, Signal Mountain's senior population drives steady demand for lab draws, pharmacy delivery and home health support. Mountain routes need a driver who has done them before in bad weather, not one seeing the road for the first time.
Walden sits alongside Signal Mountain on the same ridge, and the two are served on one run. Small practices, assisted living and home health cases up here are worth the climb when the route is planned around them.
Nine miles into Catoosa and Walker counties, Fort Oglethorpe's medical offices and pharmacies cluster along the Battlefield Parkway corridor. A frequent cross-border pairing with Rossville and Ringgold on a single Georgia loop.
Twelve miles out, Chickamauga is rural enough that specimens face a long ride to a reference lab. Veterinary clinics, primary care and home health cases here get scheduled runs sized for the distance rather than a decline.
Fourteen miles down I-75, Ringgold now anchors North Georgia's hospital care with CommonSpirit's Memorial Hospital – North Georgia on Battlefield Parkway. Practices around the exit 348 corridor need reliable transport north into Chattanooga's labs and reference facilities.
Fifteen miles north along Dayton Pike and Highway 27, Soddy-Daisy is the far end of Hamilton County and the stop most often dropped from a regional route. Scheduled coverage here means your draws are not sitting overnight.
Just outside the list? Ask. Runs into Hixson, Ooltewah, Collegedale, Dalton and Cleveland are routinely arranged for existing clients.
How It Works
Simple by design. The fewer hands and systems between your pickup and your delivery, the fewer places it can go wrong.
Call, text or email — or set a standing route once and stop requesting entirely. Tell us the pickup location, what is moving, the temperature requirement, and the delivery deadline. You are talking to the courier, so nothing gets lost in translation.
At the door, the courier confirms item and cooler counts against your manifest, checks that packaging is intact and properly marked, and logs the pickup time. A compromised or unmarked package gets flagged with your staff before it moves — not after.
Material stays sealed, secured and temperature-controlled in the courier's direct possession for the entire trip. No transfer terminals, no second driver, no overnight sitting in a hub. Transport conditions and route timing are recorded.
Handoff to a named recipient with signature and timestamp, and confirmation back to you on request. If anything was off — a refused package, a delay, an access problem — you hear it from the driver the same day, not in a monthly report.
Why RX Relay TN
National carriers are good at volume. They are structurally bad at accountability, because the driver in your building today has no relationship with your account and may never come back. Here is the honest comparison.
| What matters to your operation | RX Relay TN | Typical national fleet |
|---|---|---|
| Who drives your route | The owner, John Bogert, every run | Whoever is on shift — often a rotating contractor |
| Who answers when you call | The person driving your material | A regional dispatch center and a ticket number |
| Driving record of your courier | A clean record — verifiable, one person | Varies by driver; cannot be promised across a roster |
| Knowledge of your facility | Learns your door, codes, coolers and cutoffs | Re-explained to a new driver repeatedly |
| Crossing into Georgia | Routine — part of the normal route | Often a zone exception or a surcharge conversation |
| Subcontracting and handoffs | None — single-custody transport | Common during peaks; custody changes hands |
| Schedule changes and added stops | One conversation, same morning | Service request, approval cycle, next-day effect |
| Mountain and rural stops | Signal Mountain, Walden, Chickamauga stay on the route | First stops dropped when a route runs long |
| When something goes wrong | You hear it from the driver, same day | You find out when a result is missing |
Fair caveat: a single-driver courier is not the right fit for a facility that needs simultaneous coverage at six sites at 7 a.m. If that is you, say so — RX Relay TN will tell you straight rather than overcommit and miss a run.
Questions, Answered
The questions operations managers, lab supervisors and practice administrators actually ask on the first call.
A medical courier transports healthcare material — laboratory specimens, prescriptions, blood products, medical records, supplies — under handling, confidentiality and documentation requirements that ordinary parcel and gig delivery services are not built for. The differences that matter in practice: protected health information is handled confidentially and a Business Associate Agreement can be signed; specimens are carried under universal precautions and at a controlled temperature; regulated material such as Category B biological substances is handled per federal transport rules; and every transfer is logged so custody can be reconstructed later. A rideshare driver with an insulated bag meets none of that.
Yes. Same-day and STAT on-demand pickups are available throughout the service area, including Chattanooga, East Ridge, Red Bank and across the line into Rossville and Fort Oglethorpe. Because there is one dedicated courier rather than a dispatch queue, a STAT call goes straight to the driver. Response time depends on where the vehicle is when you call, so the honest answer on the phone will be a real window, not a marketing number.
Yes, and it is routine rather than an exception. Rossville, Fort Oglethorpe, Chickamauga and Ringgold are all regular stops, and cross-border runs are planned into normal Georgia loops instead of being quoted as special trips. This matters more than it sounds: plenty of couriers in this market treat the Tennessee–Georgia line as a zone boundary, which is how a Catoosa County practice ends up driving its own specimens to a Chattanooga lab.
Transport of clinical specimens across state lines by ground does not require a separate license for the courier; what matters is correct packaging, temperature control and documented custody, which apply identically on both sides of the line.
RX Relay TN operates under HIPAA-conscious handling practices — protected health information stays sealed and covered in transit, is never left unattended in the vehicle, and is only released to a named recipient — and will execute a Business Associate Agreement with covered entities on request.
One clarification worth making, because vendors blur it constantly: there is no government-issued "HIPAA certification" for couriers. What a covered entity should actually require is a signed BAA, documented handling procedures, and a named accountable person. RX Relay TN provides all three.
Diagnostic specimens classified as Biological Substance, Category B (UN 3373) are accepted only in the triple packaging the rule requires: a leak-proof primary receptacle, leak-proof secondary containment with absorbent material, and a rigid outer container bearing the UN 3373 marking and proper shipping name. Packaging and marking are the shipper's responsibility under 49 CFR 173.199; the courier's job is to verify the package is intact and properly marked before it goes in the vehicle, carry it correctly, and respond appropriately if there is a spill. John is trained on the function-specific handling and incident-response requirements for ground transport of this material, and carries a spill kit and PPE on every run.
Yes. Ambient, refrigerated (2–8 °C) and frozen transport are all available using coolers, gel packs and dry ice per your protocol. Because your lab — not the courier — owns the validated packaging configuration, RX Relay TN will use the cooler and coolant setup you specify and document the transport interval so your QA team can tie a result to a defensible window.
Yes — that is the entire point of the model. John Bogert owns RX Relay TN and drives the routes himself. You get one courier who learns your building, your loading door, your after-hours access, which cooler is STAT and which is routine, and what time your receiving lab stops accepting. There are no rotating temp drivers, no gig contractors, and no overflow subcontracting.
Pricing depends on four things: distance and stop count, whether the run is scheduled or on-demand, temperature and handling requirements, and time of day. Scheduled recurring routes price lower per stop than one-off STAT calls, which is why most clients start with a standing route and add STAT coverage on top. Send your stop list, draw schedule and delivery deadlines through the quote form and you will get a straight number with no after-hours, fuel or state-line surprises buried underneath it.
Both, and most clients use both. A scheduled route gives you a fixed arrival window every day (or on set days) so your staff can plan around it. On-demand STAT service sits on top of that for re-collects, add-ons and urgent runs. Routes are built around your draw schedule and the receiving lab's cutoff time.
Yes. Pharmacy delivery to assisted living, independent living, group homes and skilled nursing facilities throughout Chattanooga, East Ridge, Red Bank, Signal Mountain and the Georgia side is a core route type. Refrigerated medications are kept in cold chain, deliveries are made to a named recipient with signature captured, and recipient identity is confirmed where pharmacy or facility policy requires it. Controlled substances are handled only in line with applicable DEA requirements, the relevant state board of pharmacy rules, and your pharmacy's own documented procedure — which for cross-border deliveries means both Tennessee and Georgia.
Yes. Veterinary clinics and animal diagnostic labs across Chattanooga, Soddy-Daisy, Chickamauga and the rest of the service area are served under the same packaging, temperature and custody-documentation standards used for human clinical work. It is an underserved niche in this market and a good fit for a route-based courier.
Pickup location, date and time; item, cooler or container count verified against your manifest; packaging condition on receipt; temperature or transport condition; delivery location, date and time; and the name and signature of the person who received it. Delivery confirmation is available on request, and records are retained so a disputed specimen or questioned result can be traced back to a documented transport leg.
Yes. RX Relay TN carries commercial coverage appropriate to medical courier work and will provide a current certificate of insurance for your credentialing or vendor-onboarding file, naming your facility where required. Tell us what your compliance team needs to see and it will be sent over.
Standard dispatch hours are Monday through Friday, 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern. After-hours, weekend and holiday runs are arranged for contracted clients and for one-off urgent needs — call (925) 348-4624 and ask. Because you are calling the owner directly rather than a dispatch center, you get a yes or a no immediately instead of a callback.
Send the quote form below (or call (925) 348-4624) with your facility type, city, what needs to move, the temperature requirement, and your ideal pickup window. You will get a straight answer on feasibility and pricing, a BAA and certificate of insurance if you need them for onboarding, and a trial route so your staff can see the turnaround before committing to a contract.
Request a Pickup or Quote
You will hear back from John — the owner and the courier — not a sales rep working a lead queue. If RX Relay TN is not the right fit for your volume or geography, you will be told that directly.
Mon–Fri, 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM ET
After-hours, weekend and holiday runs by arrangement.
7477 Commons Blvd
Chattanooga, TN 37421
Chattanooga · East Ridge · Lookout Mountain · Red Bank · Signal Mountain · Walden · Soddy-Daisy, TN — Rossville · Fort Oglethorpe · Chickamauga · Ringgold, GA
Same-day reply during dispatch hours. For a STAT run happening right now, call (925) 348-4624 instead.
Please do not include patient names, dates of birth, medical record numbers or any other protected health information in this form. Describe volumes and requirements in general terms — specifics can be handled on a call or under a signed Business Associate Agreement.
Start with a single route and judge RX Relay TN on the turnaround, not the pitch.