As a rough guide, we don't take any organs if it takes more than three hours of transport time. If you saw last night's episode, Zach's lungs took about that long to get transported here to our institution. We have a total of six hours to get the organs hooked up, from the time they're taken out of the donor to the time blood flow is reestablished. On the average it takes about one hour to implant each lung. So it's not only important that the initial transplant is covered, but also that they have insurance to cover the medication's long-term period.
Some patients do have options for getting approval from other medical insurance companies.
Some have gotten funding from private sources, such as fundraisers. They're allowed to do whatever their exercise tolerance can take. The sky's the limit. She was referred to us for transplantation late in her disease process. This occurred in Christmas of '96.