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Hospitality House Would Provide Services for 150 Families a Year

Posted on: Monday, 3 April 2006, 09:01 CDT

By David R. Million World Staff Writer

A newly formed nonprofit organization is planning to open a new hospitality house to provide family-centered, home-like lodging and support services to families of patients from outside the area receiving medical treatment in local hospitals.

The Hospitality House of Tulsa Inc. facility will complement the Ronald McDonald House, which helps families of pediatric patients.

The new facility will host families of patients of all ages, said Toni Moore, president of the new organization, and who has 15 years health care administration and finance experience.

Hospitality House of Tulsa's first public fundraiser is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at Southern Hills Baptist Church, 5590 S. Lewis Ave.

The Tulsa Praise Orchestra, with guest Dave Boyer from Atlanta, will perform such songs as "God Bless The U.S.A.," and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" during a concert. A dessert reception will follow.

Tickets for the "Big Band, Big Heart" concert cost $10 each and are available at Mardel Christian & Educational Supply, Lifeway Christian Store, Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow and other locations. For more details on the concert, call 694-8888 or go to www.tulsahospitalityhouse.org.

Organizers hope to raise $30,000 with the concert and foresee an annual operating budget of $60,000.

Moore said she anticipates the new facility would serve around 150 families each year.

"There's a need for more hospitality houses in Tulsa," said Glenda Love, executive director for Ronald McDonald House of Tulsa, and the first board member for the Hospitality House of Tulsa.

"One of the things I'm very aware of when I make hospital visits and encounter families from out of town is that they're in a crisis situation," said The Rev. Bob Green of Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow. "The Hospitality House of Tulsa will provide a great service for those families."

Brooke Gage, a Hospitality House of Tulsa officer, said, "I've seen caretakers in out-of-town families going without sleep and eating out of vending machines. That leaves them without the ability to cope, which affects their hospitalized family member."

Moore said her organization spent a year gathering statistics for a patient feasibility study. Major area hospitals provided numbers of patients and distances from their homes. She also received information from the Oklahoma Hospital Association and National Association of Hospital Hospitality Houses, said Moore.

"There are more than 25,000 patients who live at least 50 miles and up to 700 miles from Tulsa. The average length of stay in a Tulsa hospital is around four days, but in many cases that time is extended to two weeks, up to two months," Moore said.

She said a National Hospitality Association 2004 survey showed most hospitality houses in communities such as Tulsa serve families from 27 states in the U.S. and up to 10 foreign countries.

Hospitality houses meet the needs of people who can not afford out-of-pocket expenses associated with a medical stay.

"When you look at the trends in health care, especially the uninsured and underinsured, it doesn't take a long medical stay to put a family in financial crisis. The average motel room in Tulsa is around $50 nightly, and it takes another $20 a day per person to eat," Moore said.

"If you had to be with a loved one for two months, your out-of- pocket expenses could easily exceed $5,000, and that doesn't include your medical bills," she said.

It was partially out of a personal health crisis and personal experiences that Moore feels she's driven to open a new hospitality house in Tulsa.

"I was raised in a very small community and personally experienced my family facing a health-care crisis when I was 17. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and was hospitalized and treated two hours away. Later, five weeks after my husband and I married, he suffered a serious accident, which resulted in emergency surgery one and a half hours from home and was hospitalized two weeks," she said.

Source: Tulsa World

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