Unity for Life Fund

For UMC Cardio-Thoracic Transplant Patients & Caregivers 

The Unity for Life Fund, which resides under the umbrella of the UMC Foundation (an IRS-recognized 501[c][3] tax-exempt foundation), was established in 2009 by a community of UMC cardio-throacic transplant recipeints and their families.

Because UMC is a Regional transplant center, at least 75 percent of its cardio-thoracic transplant patients are from outside of Tucson. In addition to evaluation, transplantation and medication costs, these patients incur substantial expenses for transportation, relocation and housing.

The purpose of the Unity for Life Fund is to assist heart and lung transplant patients and their caregivers who are in financial crisis by providing, on a temporary basis, funds to help alleviate the unexpected, often severe financial hardships created by the transplantation process.

Financial Challenges Facing Transplant Patients

• LODGING - Each transplant candidate must undergo a mandatory stay of at least one week at UMC for pre-transplant evaluation. Once accepted to the transplant waiting list, a candidate must remain close to UMC for immediate response when an organ or organs become available. After transplantion, a patient must remain close to UMC for up to three months for monitoring. These demands usually mean that an out-of-town patient and his/her spouse have two residences — their actual home and a residence in Tucson — a situation that frequently leads to financial stress and misfortune.
  
  
• TRANSPLANT SURGERY - A double-lung transplant costs approximately $500,000. Even with very good insurance coverage, the transplant recipient can expect to have to pay $30,000-$40,000 of that overall cost.
  
  
• PRESCRIPTIONS - Anit-rejection and anti-infection drugs cost, on the average, $5,000 per month. Medicare does not cover all of these expenses. Also, at a given point the transplant recipient reaches the Medicare prescription-coverage "Donut Hole," whereupon the patient is personally, entirely responsible for the next $4,550 in drug expenses, until Medicare coverage commences again.

Toward the end of those eight years, my heart deteriorated so rapidly that I had to be flown via "life flight" from my home in New Mexico to UMC. Because I was unable to work and was quickly accumulating substantial medical expenses, I soon lost my business and then my home. There was no way that I could have planned for such circumstances, or for the cost of my transplant and the very expensive, lifelong pharmaceutical regimen that would follow transplantation. 

In spite of my ongoing situation, my post-transplant life is rich and reqarding, and I remain so appreciative of the great gift that saved my life that I want to help ensure that pre-transplant patients and transplant recipients have sufficient resources to see them through their own crises. The Unity for Life Fund is an important way in which I can do that.