A dose of feel-good to kick off the weekend.
Over the past eight years, hospital staff at Monongahela (Pa.) Valley Hospital's cancer center has helped almost 1,000 cancer patients pay for part of their treatment.
It all started when one cancer patient couldn't afford to pay the co-pay for chemotherapy, and staff at the hospital's Charles L. and Rose Sweeney Melenyzer Pavilion and Regional Cancer Center helped place the patient in a program offering financial assistance, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report.
Since then, the cancer center has arranged for patients to receive more than $1.6 million for co-pay assistance and free chemotherapy prescriptions, according to the report. So far this year, the center has already assisted 25 patients.
Monongahela Valley Hospital often works with the Patient Advocacy Foundation and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to provide the financial assistance, according to the report.
Corinne Laboon, hospital spokeswoman, said in the report the program is centered around the trust between patients and providers. "When a person comes to us for care, we get to know them. There's a trust built," she says, adding that such a trust lets patients tell providers when they can't afford their co-pays or their chemotherapy prescriptions.
Many patients coming to Monongahela Valley Hospital are enrolled in Medicare, which generally has around a $6,000 deductible patients are required to pay before coverage kicks in. Financial assistance programs generally offer an average grant amount of $5,000, according to the report.
Additionally, the hospital handles all paperwork associated with co-pay assistance, including the explanation of benefits forms and invoices.
"The patients will never see the invoices, and the payment comes directly to the hospital so that the patients and their families do not need to worry about processing payments," said Bonny Holmes, oncology supervisor at the Cancer Center, in the report.