Sudbury cancer lodge to charge out-of-town patients

A place that once gave out-of-town cancer patients a free place to stay in Sudbury will soon start charging a nightly fee.

The Northeast Cancer Centres Daffodil Terrace lodge in Sudbury opened it's doors in the 1990s, and has since provided people undergoing cancer treatmenta free place to stay.

However, as a way of dealing with rising costs, those frommore than 200 kilometres awaywho travel to Sudbury for treatmentwill be charged $25 dollars per night up to a maximum of$100.

The operations for the lodge are included in base funding that comes from Cancer Care Ontario, said Jessica Diplock, who oversees Daffodil Terrace. That funding has been static for the last number of years. But what has not been static is the increase in utilities which, it would be fair to say, we have no control over.

Diplocksaid hopefully,patients will only be paying out-of-pocket for a short period oftime. That's because the lodge fees are exactly what people are eligible for under the Northern Health Travel Grant.

Diplock said patients should be reimbursed for the cost of their stay through the program within four to six weeks.

ButMichael Mantha, incumbent NDPMPP for Algoma-Manitoulin, said that the reimbursement process does not always go smoothly.

Some people are waiting as long as six months, said Mantha, who has been fighting to reform the grant system.

The charges for out of town patients staying at the Daffodil Lodge start on June 15th.