Navigating a complex medical diagnosis is stressful on its own. And for many already in tight financial straits, or for those whose medical bills have put them in an unforeseen state of emergency, the deep layers of uncertainty can be too much to bear.

Enter patient assistance funds, of which there are dozens in the M Health Fairview system. Funded entirely by donors, these safety nets are there to help in times of need, when a patient’s own resources and other funding sources have been exhausted.

“What Carolyn’s Comforts has done is it lets us give funds to those families for simple things—getting here for chemotherapy from South Dakota, parking, helping pay the mortgage that month,” says M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital physician-in-chief Joseph Neglia, MD, MPH, of one such patient emergency assistance fund established by former Minnesota Vikings executive Kevin Warren in memory of his late sister. “You see it take a little bit of stress off the families.”

Learn from the hospital team how financial assistance funds make a critical difference in patients’ lives.