Editor’s Note: In Issue 20 of Medical Travel Today we featured a link to blogsouthwest.com where a grateful mother by the name of Shannon Robertson was singing the praises of Southwest Airlines’ Medical Transportation Grant Program. Thanks to the program, Roberston, who lives in Louisiana, hasn’t had to worry one day about expenses associated with transporting her daughter to Boston Children’s Hospital for ongoing treatments for bladder extrophy. This heart-warming post prompted me to reach out to the good folks at Southwest to learn more about the program. What follows is my conversation with Debbie Wafford, a senior specialist on Southwest’s Community Relations and Giving Team. Medical Travel Today (MTT): Tell me about the program and how it started. Debbie Wafford (DW): We’re actually celebrating our fifth year as a formal program. Prior to that we received intermittent requests for consideration and we helped out as best we could. But we really treated those instances like one-offs. Over time, though, the number of requests started to grow. A lot of it was word of mouth, and we were fielding calls from individuals, as well as family members or friends of those needing care, explaining the need and seeking help. Pretty quickly the need started to outgrow the capacity of our team. Concurrent to that, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws started to take effect. At that point the restrictions made it impossible for us to operate the way we had in the past. The direct consumer-to-us approach was no longer an option. Of course we weren’t going to abandon the effort; we just needed to figure how to do it within, or rather around, the confines of HIPAA, as well as more effectively and efficiently. With the formal program now in place, we have the opportunity to support many non-profit hospitals across the country, as well as medical transport charities. MTT: Exactly how does the program do that? DW: What we do is offer partner hospitals and transport providers with in-kind donations in the form of complimentary roundtrip tickets. They in turn give the tickets to deserving patients who must travel for medical care, as well as to their companion caregivers. In just the past year we donated 6,000 tickets, which equates to about $2.4 million USD. MTT: Wow. That’s a lot of tickets. DW: Yes, it is. This has been the largest year thus far in terms of budget and the number of hospitals we’ve partnered with. MTT: And how does that work? How does one become a Southwest partner hospital? DW: Well, it’s an annual program. Our partners reapply each year along with potential, new partners. What they do is fill out an online grant application. Our team then evaluates them based on a number of parameters. First, we’re looking for facilities in cities served by either by Southwest or AirTran, which we acquired last year. We do that because we don’t want to challenge an individual who is traveling for health needs to require additional ground transportation. Second, we’re looking for hospitals that we consider to be destination hospitals. That is, they offer a specialized service or treatment, or are highly recognized. We’re looking for a facility that people need to travel to for care that they can’t get locally. We also look at the hospital’s need. How many patients do they have traveling in for care? That tells us a lot. We also want to make sure that we’re working with a variety of hospitals, not just one type of specialized care center. This ensures the program works for a broad range of patients with varying medical needs. And finally, we’re looking to make sure we’re covering as much of the country as possible. MTT: What’s your involvement in approving patients? DW: We have no input on those decisions. Each hospital establishes its own set of criteria for determining who is eligible. Our only request is that the ticket is issued to a patient, caregiver or family member. MTT: All your hubs are US-based. Does that mean all the patients utilizing the program are American? DW: Good question. While we only service domestic cities, the hospitals do provide care to patients from other countries. What I understand they do is get them to a close border town and then onto a Southwest location where they then go for care. MTT: Are you satisfied with the current size and scope of your program? DW: We are happy with where we’re at but there are a few hospitals we’d like to have consider partnering with us…a few well-known ones that we think would be a great fit for the program. It’s really such a young program. For the moment we’re focused on making sure we’re hitting all the destination hospitals. That said, we’re certainly having some conversations about the future and trying to figure out what might be next, and how we can be ready for it. About Debbie Wafford As a senior specialist in Community Relations & Giving for Southwest Airlines, Wafford manages Southwest Airlines Medical Transportation Grant Program, and also specializes in developing relationships on a national level with a special focus on organizations as they relate to “Families Facing Serious Illness.” Debbie oversees the team’s reporting-tracking Southwest’s donations and employee volunteerism. These metrics help quantify and share Southwest’s story to all of our employees and external stakeholders through Southwest Airlines One Report.