User:Kenny1ae/sandbox

The Renucci Hospitality House is a non-profit organization located in Grand Rapids, Michigan that provides accommodations for patient familes fo the Butterworth and Blodgett hospitals and Helen DeVos Children's Hospital.

Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Renucci House was funded by a "capital campaign" and "by a donation from Mr. and Mrs. Peter Renucci". The Renucci House opened in 1999, placed beside Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital. This House is centrally located in downtown Grand Rapids and is in close proximity to two major hospitals. Renucci House provides hospitality for families enduring a medical experience. In order to stay at the Renucci House, individuals must live 30 miles away from Spectrum Health Butterworth Hosptial, be an outpatient, have a doctors appointment, or be visiting a family member in the hospital. At $45 a night, the Renucci House is an affordable alternative for families whose medical bills are piling up.

Medical bills can soar as days turn into months of families who have relation or friends in a hospital. In the United States, "Health care costs have risen faster than the Consumer Price Index for most of the past 40 years. This growth in expenditures has increasingly placed a direct burden on patients, either because they are uninsured and must pay out of pocket for all their care or because insurance plans shift a portion of the costs back to patients through deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance". Often, low income families will not have strong medical insurance. The financial burden rises with each medical procedure and each trip to the hospital. As medical costs rise and families spend money on the medical bills, the costs of out of pocket expenses and the financial burden these costs create continue to increase. The out of pocket expense for families living through an experience that needs medical attention can increase quickly, especially for low income families. A study in 2008 found, "even when affordability standards directly relate out-of-pocket spending to family income, low-income families likely experience greater financial strain at very low levels of spending since they tend to pay a higher percentage of their income on other necessities and have little or no discretionary income available for medical care". With a potential lack of medical insurance, the money families spend during medical ordeals is first used for medical bills. This limits the amount of money low income families can use towards the out of pocket expenses, such as gas or hotel rooms. Families rely hospitality houses, such as the Renucci House, to limit one aspect of their financial stress.

For families in dire straights, based on income and their medical situation, the Renucci House will provide free housing. Donations and fundraising ensure that the Renucci House will remain a valued resource for families.

Example
An example of how to re-write this material would be to just list the basics, so for example the lead sentence could be as follows:


 * The Renucci Hospitality House is a non-profit organization located in Grand Rapids, Michigan that provides accommodations for patient families of the Butterworth and Blodgett hospitals and Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital.

This gets the general information across without it being too promotional. Be very careful about quoting from source material, as you should only use quotes when there's no better way to impart the information. Quotes that talk up (ie, advertise) the topic should generally be avoided because it can make the article seem non-neutral, like we're trying to promote the Renucci house. Also make sure that you avoid words like "excellent" or "affordable", as those are typically seen as promotional buzzwords that can make the article promotional.

Something else to be careful about is that most organizations of this type (ie, hospitality houses and most non-profit organizations) won't pass notability guidelines on Wikipedia, as they rarely get the type of coverage needed for this and they won't inherit notability from being associated with presumably notable hospitals. To use an example, I used to work for a hospital that had a fairly large and well thought of hospitality house. It never really gained enough coverage to pass notability guidelines, despite its reputation - it's just that common. (Here's a local source, if you're curious about it.)

I'm concerned that this organization won't pass notability guidelines, meaning that even if you work on the article it will never survive as a live article. A good alternative would be for you to work on the article "house of hospitality", as the article is fairly small and doesn't really have a lot of information on the page in general, so there's a lot of potential for expansion. If you wanted to stick specifically with hospital hospitality houses, there's still a lot that could be added. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)