NEW YORK, Jody Merl, president of Innovative Travel Marketing (ITM), and Michael R. Stoler, president of the investment banking/management consulting firm Princeton Commercial Corporation, have teamed up to create the ITM Hospitality Fund to provide complimentary hotel rooms for patients and families in times of need.

ITM, the leading barter company specializing in travel, and Stoler, an active health care philanthropist, have partnered with New York area medical centers in metropolitan New York, to donate lodging to needy patients and families who are undergoing treatment at these facilities. The contribution of hotel accommodations is designed to lessen the emotional and financial burdens of being away from home while receiving treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, organ transplantation and other life threatening conditions which involve extensive hospital stays, doctors visits or ambulatory therapies an extensive distance from home.

ITM, whose primary commodities are hotel inventory and media, has provided an endowment of accommodations to the Fund from its available ITM hotel inventory in Manhattan.

Stoler, ITM and several leading medical institutions administer the ITM Hospitality Fund to qualifying patients, with determination primarily based on financial need and consideration also given to geographic distance from home. Eligible hotel guests also include ambulatory patients and their families (up to four members). Building upon the wonderfully successful Ronald MacDonald House concept, the ITM Hospitality Fund pampers families with exceptional first-class accommodations offering both for convenience and comfort in time of need.

Rationale for the Program

Research has shown that having loved ones in close proximity to the patient being treated are an important adjunct to successful treatment and recovery. The ITM Hospitality Fund is a means for giving treatment a positive outcome, and along the way, to reduce the trauma that affects both patients and family members during treatment of serious illness.

With escalating medical costs and the restrictions imposed by health insurance coverage, out of pocket expenses can dissipate savings, compounded by the geographical availability of services (patients traveling to New York from around the United States and the world). In many instances, patients and their families do not have the financial means to pay for the medical treatment, and certainly not the cost of related hotel accommodations. The ITM Hospitality Fund reduces accommodation expenses for relatives and loved ones. The cost to the patient and the family is limited to the New York State and City hotel occupancy and sales tax on the hotel room, approximately $25 to $60 per day. Other hotel services used by the patient or family would be charged at prevailing rates and are their sole responsibility.

The impetus for creating the ITM Hospitality Fund is to devise an additional outlet to make barter work for a socially charitable cause. The Fund is the quintessence of barter; it enables the optimal use of excess inventory to aid the less fortunate during a critical time in life.

Coordination

Michael Stoler, Jody Merl and the hospitals' departments of social work, together with the treatment rendering departments, coordinate this program. Prominent business and health care leaders serve as members of the lay advisory board of the ITM Hospitality Fund.

Case Examples

Four poignant medical cases at New York academic and research medical centers, illustrate how the ITM Hospitality Fund provides a unique service and critical support for patients and their families in times of need. The parents of an eight-month old baby boy residing in Albany, New York, receive an urgent phone call on a Tuesday evening that a kidney is available for their son. The parents immediately leave Albany to travel to New York City to a pediatric neo-natal transplant center. The parents and the grandparents require hotel accommodations, and through the efforts of the ITM Hospitality Fund, they are provided with a four-night hotel stay in Manhattan at no cost to the family.

A 38-year old single mother with two young children, is undergoing treatment for severe metastasis breast cancer. Her serious condition requires a specialized protocol of experimental chemotherapy. The treatment debilitates the young woman, making it difficult for her to travel home after the daily treatment. The newly created ITM Hospitality Fund provides the woman with complimentary accommodations for two nights at a hotel less than a quarter mile from the medical facility.

A 55-year old, unemployed school teacher from Hunter, New York, with severe diabetes must travel from upstate New York to Manhattan for a specialized diagnostic neurological test prior to a major spinal stenosis operation later in the month. Due to the efforts of the team at the ITM Hospitality Fund, the patient receives a hotel room for three nights at no cost, to be situated less than one half-mile from the hospital.

A 28-year old father of three, with inoperable brain cancer, is placed in a hospice in Manhattan. His wife, their three children and their aunt and uncle require hotel accommodations. The ITM Hospitality Fund provides four nights of no-cost hotel rooms to the children, aunt and uncle.