Donors who contribute to Longs Peak Hospital Foundation’s Patient Assistance Fund provide the wind beneath staff members’ wings to make amazing things possible for patients in need. This financial backing, combined with staff members who are willing to go far beyond their job duties, benefits patients who have few resources.
Here are just a few examples of the extraordinary help patients in need have received via the Patient Assistance Fund and dedicated hospital staff:
- Physical and occupational therapists came together to move a young man’s possessions out of his rental home. After a serious accident, he was in the hospital for nearly a month, and he then moved to a long-term rehabilitation facility. This patient had no one in his life who could help him with moving, and he couldn’t do it himself because he was incapacitated. Without the help of hospital staff and a moving truck rented with foundation funding, the man’s belongings would have been put outside on a curb.
- A hospital staff member used patient assistance funds to acquire a medical bed with an electric lift through GoodHealthWill. GoodHealthWill collects donations of durable medical equipment and health care supplies and provides them to the public “thrift-store style.” The bed was for a man with a wife and two teenaged sons. He had terminal cancer and wanted to spend his last days at home with his family. Our staff member loaded the bed into a truck and delivered it to the family’s home. The teen sons and our staff member worked together at the family home to assemble the bed. This poignant experience couldn’t have happened without funding from donors.
- After a 30-day hospital stay, a patient was allowed to return home with the stipulation that he must procure a hospital-grade bed, as well as the transfer devices necessary to move him safely to and from the bed. His family was able to pay for the equipment, but they had no way to transport it. A Longs Peak Hospital social worker took her own time to rent a truck with patient assistance funds, pick up the equipment from GoodHealthWill and deliver it to the home. The staff member’s time, along with support from the assistance fund, ensured a safer living situation for this patient in need.
- A patient struggling with progressive, disease-related blindness needed a two-week course of intravenous (IV) antibiotic treatment. This man had no health insurance and did not qualify for Medicaid. The only way he could undergo the IV antibiotic treatment was if it could be done on an outpatient basis so he could continue to work at his job managing an apartment complex. Patient assistance funds, along with discounts that a hospital employee procured from the company providing the IV infusions, helped this individual get the medical treatment he needed in a way that worked for his lifestyle.
