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Finding Financial Help When You Need It Most: Meet the PAN Foundation

February 2021 Vol 7 No 1
Ayesha Azam
Vice President of Medical Affairs, PAN Foundation
Washington, DC

A few years into his retirement, John Fisher was enjoying time outdoors and camping around Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, when he started to notice a nagging cough and shortness of breath. When it got worse, he consulted with his doctor, who told him he had large B-cell lymphoma. Mr. Fisher was shocked and devastated.

Although he was able to get chemotherapy treatments right away, he worried about how to pay for these costly drugs. He had Medicare health insurance, which has limits on payment for drug therapies. That means that patients have large copays on expensive medications, such as chemotherapies.

“Any real hope for a solution was muted by the realization that I would be faced with a large debt afterwards that I would not be able to pay,” Mr. Fisher recalled.

But Mr. Fisher was lucky. The billing department of his treatment facility introduced him to the Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation—a charitable organization that was able to help him pay for his out-of-pocket copays. Help from PAN became the silver lining in his story. Mr. Fisher explained that receiving copay support lifted an “unbearable load” from his shoulders.

Through my work at the PAN Foundation, I get the chance to help many people like Mr. Fisher find this silver lining. It is why I am so proud to support PAN, whose mission is to help people with life-threatening, chronic, and rare diseases get the medications and treatments they need, by assisting with their out-of-pocket costs, and advocating for improved access to medications.

Over the past 15 years, PAN has served nearly 1 million patients, providing more than $4 billion in financial support for their medical needs. Whether you are already familiar with PAN’s work, or you are just getting to know us for the first time, here are a few of the ways patients and providers can find help through PAN.

Applying for Financial Assistance

PAN provides patient assistance grants for nearly 70 different medical conditions, including many types of cancers and rare diseases. Our eligibility checker lets you find out whether you (or if you are a provider, whether your patients) qualify for any of these funds in a few minutes.

PAN grants often cover 100% of a patient’s out-of-pocket prescription medication costs, including deductibles, copays, and co-insurance. We cover the cost of drugs that are FDA-approved, or drugs listed in official compendia or in evidence-based guidelines issued by professional medical societies for each disease. This includes brand-name and generic medications.

Eligible patients can also receive transportation assistance to cover travel expenses to their doctors’ offices and to the pharmacy.

To apply, patients—or caregivers or providers who are applying on their behalf—complete a paperless application online, get instant approval, and in most cases, can begin using their grant immediately.

You can apply online in minutes, and track your grant in our online portals. Our website also features a series of how-to guides to help patients navigate the patient portal and apply for a grant. Visit www.panfoundation.org to locate these guides, or to search our disease funds.

Get Funding Alerts Through the Wait List

We do our best to keep our funds open all year round, but we sometimes run out of funds for some diseases, at which point we announce that the fund is closed, until new funds become available. You can search by disease, medication, or browse our alphabetical list at www.panfoundation.org/find-disease-fund.

If the fund you would like to apply for is closed, we recommend that you sign up for the wait list. Our wait list system allows prospective grantees to get the first chance to apply for assistance when funding becomes available.

Our website also tracks available funding at other charitable organizations, so even if our fund is closed at PAN, you will be able to find out whether help is available somewhere else. Our goal is to help patients who need financial help find the help they need, regardless of the source.

Connect with a Patient Support Organization

People with serious health conditions, and their families and caregivers, often need support beyond financial assistance. That is why we partner with more than 20 leading patient advocacy groups to connect people to communities that can offer support with the complex physical, emotional, and practical realities of life-threatening, chronic, and rare diseases.

When you apply for a program at PAN, you can sign up to receive follow-up support from a leading patient support organization that specializes in your specific disease, such as prostate cancer, lung cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or other types of cancer. More information is available at www.panfoundation.org/resources-2/patient-support-organizations/.

Many patients benefit from the resources offered by these patient support organizations, which provide different types of support, including symptom management, educational resources, and even peer support groups or counseling.

Sign up for FundFinder to Get Real-Time Funding Alerts

Over the years, we came to recognize that the process of searching the Internet for open funds, whether at PAN or at other nonprofit organizations, was challenging and time-consuming.

This is the reason we launched the first patient assistance app—FundFinder—which allows users to sign up to receive notifications for 200 funds across 9 different charitable organizations.

Our award-winning app just launched a new addition, which also allows users to search for support organizations that may have peer support, educational resources, and other helpful offerings.

This app is free to use and anyone can sign up for it. With more than 500,000 notifications sent out in our first 2 years, it is connecting thousands of patients to information about funding opportunities. Check it out, at www.fundfinder.org.

What Information Do I Need to Apply as a Patient?

You will need to provide the following details, including your:

  • Diagnosis
  • Medication(s) you’re using
  • Prescribing provider’s name and contact information
  • Health insurance carrier
  • Contact information, including your e-mail and Social Security number
  • Adjusted gross annual income for your household.

To learn more about this or to find a fund for your cancer type, visit panfoundation.org/find-disease-fund/.

Key Points

  • PAN provides patient assistance grants for nearly 70 different medical conditions, including many types of cancers
  • PAN grants often cover 100% of a patient’s out-of-pocket prescription medication costs, including deductibles, copays, and co-insurance
  • Over the past 15 years, PAN has served nearly 1 million patients, providing more than $4 billion in financial support for their medical needs
  • If the fund you would like to apply for is closed, it is recommended that you sign up for the wait list
  • FundFinder is a free app that allows patients to sign up to receive notifications for 200 financial support funds across 9 different charitable organizations

Patient Resources

Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation
www.panfoundation.org
PAN: Find a Disease Fund
www.panfoundation.org/find-disease-fund/
FundFinder app
www.fundfinder.org

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