Over the past year, Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) has heard many concerns from our patients regarding the patient travel and housing process. We wanted to share some information on what we have been doing to improve these experiences.
Closing the Willow House
Recently, TCC made the decision to close the Willow House, our patient hotel. This decision was not taken lightly and a lot of time and consideration went into it. Since the opening of the Willow House in 2012 – we have struggled to bring the hotel to a place where it was operating at its full capacity. On average – the Willow House only had 10 rooms utilized each night despite having 37 rooms available.
The Willow House was never fully utilized since it’s opening – meaning that all 37 rooms were never fully booked at any time over the past 11 years. Many people did not want to utilize the Willow House for various reasons – but more specifically location – being on South Cushman and far away from amenities and conveniences.
The TCC Housing First Program, which provides safe housing for our vulnerable homeless population, has had a large waitlist for many years – with only 39 rooms available. The closure of the Willow House increased room availability to 76.
Current Patient Housing Options
TCC has agreements in place with local hotels to ensure that we have rooms blocked for patients through our Patient Travel Division. This means that if the Bertha Moses Patient Hostel (BMPH) is unable to house all patients – we will have alternative options available. The reserved hotel rooms combined with current lodging available at the BMPH will provide more than triple the amount of rooms normally utilized at the Willow House. If you have questions, please contact Patient Travel at 907-451-6682.
Patient Housing and Travel Improvement Processes
TCC has been listening to the concerns of our patients and are taking active steps toward improving the patient travel and housing experience. TCC is discussing long-term options to better meet the need for patient housing in Fairbanks and is hiring a Patient Travel and Lodging Manager to ensure continuity and coordination between our Patient Travel and Patient Housing efforts.
The past two months, TCC hosted a patient listening session where patients, family members and escorts could provide feedback, share their stories and discuss solutions. This input will be utilized in an improvement plan moving forward.
We have several small workgroups targeting specific improvements to streamline our internal travel authorization request processes. We are collecting data to inform leadership on areas that require more advocacy to change policies with Medicaid and the local Medicaid hotels to better meet the needs travelers in our region. Vacant positions within Travel and Housing programs are being filled currently, which will increase our capacity to better manage the volume of travel requests. We are also evaluating all of the information regarding the travel process that is being provided to staff and to patients so that everyone involved is better informed and understand the system well. Our goal is to make travel and housing the least of anyone’s worries when they need to travel away from their home community for health care needs. Please let us know if you have suggestions for improvement.
Do you have solutions or ideas? Share them!
As we move forward with improvement plans for our patient travel and housing process, we invite anyone who has solutions or recommendations to share them with us! Visit our website at https://www.tananachiefs.org/patient-travel-lodging-feedback-and-comments/ to submit your comments.