What 71 medical travel hotel stays actually looked like
Published 2026-09-15
Most advice about patient lodging is written from the hotel side or from a survey. This is written from the bookings. Every number below is measured from confirmed, completed hotel stays booked through Carepassage for members of one Oklahoma-based health plan, 2 June to 12 September 2026: 71 stays, 137 nights, 31 facilities in four states. It is one client and one summer, so treat it as a shape, not a benchmark. The shape is consistent enough to plan around.
Stays are short: the median is one night
Thirty-eight of the 71 stays (54%) were a single night. Sixty-one (86%) were two nights or fewer. The mean is pulled up to 1.9 nights by a handful of longer stays; the longest was 12 nights, for a bariatric procedure with a recovery window.
For a program this changes what "lodging support" has to be. A negotiated corporate rate assumes a stay long enough to matter; a one-night stay is decided by whether a room is available near the facility on the night, at a price that is clear up front. The number of nights a family can actually be reimbursed for is the second question, and it is answered by the plan, not the hotel.
- 54% one night, 86% two nights or fewer
- Mean 1.9 nights, median 1, longest 12
- Longer stays cluster around procedures with a stated recovery window
Close means about two miles, and never more than six
The median hotel was 2.4 miles from the facility. Nineteen stays (27%) were within one mile, 30 (42%) within two, and 70 of 71 within five. The farthest was 5.6 miles. Nobody stayed across town.
Two miles is an important number because it is not walking distance for most people the day after a procedure. It is a short ride. A lodging list that only asks "is it near?" without asking "how does the patient get from the room to the door?" is missing the part that decides whether the night works.
- Median 2.4 miles from the facility, mean 2.3
- 27% within one mile, 42% within two, 99% within five
- The farthest stay in 71 was 5.6 miles
Booked late: a median of four days before check-in
Fifty-six of the 71 stays (79%) were booked less than a week before check-in; the median lead time was 4.2 days. That is not carelessness. Procedure dates move, pre-operative clearances land late, and the family cannot commit to a room until the date is fixed.
This is the number that quietly breaks a room-block or a "call the hotel and quote the code" model. Blocks release weeks out; a code helps only if the property still has the rate open on a four-day booking. Whatever a program offers has to work at four days, on a phone, with the rate visible before the card goes in.
- Median lead time 4.2 days, 79% booked inside a week
- Lead time is set by the procedure date, not by the family
- A lodging arrangement that needs two weeks of notice serves the minority of stays
A fifth of check-ins are on a Sunday
Check-ins by day: Sunday 15, Monday 12, Tuesday 17, Wednesday 17, Thursday 10, and none on a Friday or Saturday. The Sunday share (21%) is the night before a Monday procedure; the absence of weekend check-ins is the absence of weekend procedures.
The practical effect is that the hotel a program recommends has to be open, staffed and reachable on a Sunday evening, when the front desk is thinnest and a problem with the reservation has nobody at the clinic to call. It also means the "night before" stay is the commonest kind, and the pre-arrival instructions a program sends should be written for it.
- Sunday 21%, Monday 17%, Tuesday 24%, Wednesday 24%, Thursday 14%
- No Friday or Saturday check-ins in 71 stays
- Write pre-arrival instructions for the night-before case first
Where the stays were
Fifty-one stays were at Oklahoma facilities, 18 in Texas, one in Arkansas and one in New York, across 31 distinct facilities. Twenty-seven of the 31 facilities saw three stays or fewer in the period, and one facility accounted for 21 stays on its own. A program whose patients scatter across many facilities cannot maintain a hotel relationship at each one; that is the case for a method that works at any address rather than a list of properties.
- 31 facilities, 4 states, 71 stays
- 27 of 31 facilities had three stays or fewer; one facility had 21
- Coverage matters more than depth when patients scatter
How to read this, and how to measure your own
This is one client, one summer, and a plan-sponsored population whose travel is arranged by a coordinator, so the lead times may be shorter and the stays closer than a self-arranging family would produce. A fertility or food-allergy program with recurring visits will see a different night distribution. The method transfers even where the numbers do not: pull your completed stays, take the median nights, the median distance to your door, the median days between booking and check-in, and the day-of-week of check-in. Four numbers, and each of them changes a decision about what lodging support should be.
Carepassage records all four for every stay booked through it, per facility, so a program sees its own version of this page in its reporting rather than an industry average.
Common questions
Where do these numbers come from?
From the bookings themselves: every confirmed, completed hotel stay booked through Carepassage for one client between 2 June and 12 September 2026. Distance is computed from the booked hotel to the facility on the trip. No survey, no estimates. Patient identity is not part of any figure.
Is one night really enough for a procedure trip?
For the majority of outpatient procedures in this set, yes: check in the night before, procedure in the morning, home the same day. Longer stays clustered around procedures with a stated recovery window, and those were known in advance.
Why does lead time matter to a program?
Because a lodging arrangement that needs notice serves the minority of stays. With a median of four days between booking and check-in, whatever a program offers has to work on short notice, on a phone, with the price visible before the card goes in.
Will these numbers hold for my program?
The shape (short, close, late, a Sunday-heavy calendar) is likely to hold for procedure-based care. The exact values will not. Measure your own with the four numbers in the last section; it is an afternoon of work with data you already hold.