Temporary Medical Lodging: The Distance Between Home and Here

By Jenny Owens, ScD, MS
Vice Provost of Academic Affairs
University of Maryland, Baltimore

When we talk about patient experience, the conversation tends to center on what happens inside the hospital. Communication, safety, care transitions, wait times. But for thousands of patients and families who must travel for treatment, the experience begins long before they arrive. It starts in the unseen hours. Lying awake doing the math on whether they can afford to stay close. Wondering whether to postpone care because lodging is unaffordable. Sleeping in a car because every nearby room is booked or restricted. We have not yet asked, seriously and systematically, what it means for care when we leave that part of the experience unexamined.

An Overlooked Part of the Journey

Where people sleep while accessing healthcare is most often treated as a logistical matter, or a charitable one. Families either figure it out on their own, or they are fortunate enough to find a Ronald McDonald House or a hospitality home nearby. When lodging is discussed at all in healthcare settings, it tends to appear under the heading of amenity or community benefit, something adjacent to care rather than woven into it.

But what if we thought about it differently? Research on the social determinants of health has increasingly documented the pathways by which unmet social needs shape health outcomes. Temporary medical lodging fits squarely within that framework. And for many patients and caregivers navigating domestic medical travel, it is the need that remains most systematically unaddressed.

Two recent national studies from my research program offer some early evidence of scope and scale.¹^,²

What the Data Reveals

When we mapped lodging organizations across the country, we identified 510 serving patients and caregivers traveling for care, representing somewhere between 9,857 and 15,087 rooms available on any given night.¹ The resources exist. But they are scattered, inconsistent, and can be difficult to find, particularly for patients who are not children and not affiliated with the diagnoses that tend to attract philanthropic attention.

Among the organizations we examined, more than half offer free lodging and the vast majority provide some form of financial assistance.² That generosity is real and significant. And yet the distribution is uneven in ways that matter. The gaps follow predictable lines drawn by diagnosis, age, geography, and income. Pediatric-only facilities offer substantially more support services than those serving adults or all ages, with 99% providing services beyond housing compared to 77% of adult-serving facilities. Adult patients face higher out-of-pocket costs, with nearly 19% of adult-serving facilities charging $46 or more per night, compared to just 1.5% of pediatric facilities.

What Might Change If We Took This Seriously

The patient experience field has done important work expanding our understanding of what shapes the human experience in healthcare. We have moved well beyond clinical outcomes to ask about communication, dignity, belonging, and trust. Lodging may be the next frontier in that expansion.

If we recognized where people sleep as a health-related social need in its own right, several things might follow. Care teams might ask about it earlier and more consistently, the way we now ask about food insecurity or transportation. Navigators might have tools to connect families with options before a crisis, not after. Hospitals might build community partnerships that treat lodging organizations not as charitable extras but as part of the care continuum. And researchers might begin to ask what we still do not know: does having a place to sleep affect care adherence, caregiver functioning, and outcomes over time?

To address the fragmentation problem directly, we created a publicly available, geocoded national map so that patients, caregivers, and care teams can see what lodging resources exists in a single place.¹ It is a starting point.

An Invitation

The Beryl Institute defines patient experience as the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care. For patients who travel for care, the continuum extends into the parking lot, the hospitality house down the street, the car they slept in, the motel they could not afford.

For the first time, we can see the landscape. The organizations, the gaps, the populations left out, the rooms that exist and the ones that don’t. Knowing is not the same as acting. But it is, perhaps, where acting begins.

References

1. Owens JA, Ezeji V, Williams V, Okoye G, Lilly FRW, Ward RJ. A Place to Stay: Building a Centralized Public Map of Lodging Resources for Patients and Caregivers Traveling for Care. Public Health Rep. 2026 Jan-Feb;141(1):38-42. doi: 10.1177/00333549251382522. Epub 2025 Oct 30. PMID: 41165168; PMCID: PMC12575292.
2. Owens JA, Okoye G, Lilly FRW, Lyons MJ, Ward RJ, Mattingly TJ II. A national study of lodging organizations supporting patient and caregiver access to care in the US. J Community Health. 2025;50(1049-1056). doi:10.1007/s10900-025-01485-3

About the Author

A nationally recognized scholar-practitioner, Dr. Jenny Owens brings a human-centered, evidence-driven lens to the design and evaluation of complex systems. Her research focuses on health-related social needs, with particular emphasis on housing as a critical, but underexamined, factor in patient and caregiver access to care. She entered this area of focus not through academic inquiry alone, but through lived experience: after her son’s rare diagnosis, she witnessed how families traveling for treatment are often stretched to their limits — emotionally, logistically, and financially. This perspective inspired her to advance data, tools, and evidence that improve outcomes for patients and caregivers navigating those journeys.

She is the founder of the Healthcare Housing Lab, where she leads national studies on the availability, quality, and equity of medical lodging ecosystems. She also co-chairs a research-to-practice committee of the Healthcare Hospitality Network, working with more than 140 member organizations to translate research into meaningful support for families. Her innovations include the Healthcare Housing Navigator — a first-of-its-kind national tool that catalogues all known lodging support across the United States, helping patients, caregivers, and hospital social workers identify accessible, nearby accommodations during medical treatment.

Dr. Owens‘ leadership is grounded in values of service, innovation, and collaborative impact. She has led the development of more than 20 graduate programs aligned with emerging workforce needs in health and human services, reimagined enrollment strategies to reduce barriers to access, and advanced institutional initiatives that recognize and support caregivers as essential members of the care ecosystem.

She is a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader, a Warnock Social Innovation Fellow, and an alum of the Johns Hopkins Social Innovation Lab. Dr. Owens holds a Doctor of Science in Information and Interaction Design from the University of Baltimore, a Master’s in Management and Leadership from East Stroudsburg University, and a Bachelor’s in Exercise and Sport Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her background spans health science, leadership, and human-centered design, positioning her as a connector across disciplines and a builder of ideas that reach beyond the academic setting.

Additional Resources

Webinar:  The Impact of Hospital Hospitality Lodging on the Patient and Family Experience – The Beryl Institute