University of Utah Hospital opens hotel for patients, families

Rachel Lukasik spent more than two months in the burn unit at University of Utah Hospital after going down with a flaming plane in Montana.

The 11-year-old is out of the hospital now, but still not able to return home to Great Falls because her doctors are monitoring her skin grafts.

And that's where the U.'s new Patient and Family Housing hotel comes in: It gives Rachel and her father, Rod Lukasik, an inexpensive place to stay while they're in Salt Lake City.

"This has been unchartered territory for us," said Rod Lukasik Wednesday at the ribbon cutting for the hotel, which was formerly a Baymont Inn & Suites near Salt Lake City International Airport.

Before the hotel opened, he stayed in his daughter's hospital room.

University Health Care is leasing the former hotel, which so far has 44 remodeled rooms, 27 of them with small kitchenettes. Another 46 rooms on the second floor can be put into use once the lower floor is filled.

U. Health Care officials declined to say how much the university is paying to lease the building.

About half the rooms are filled so far with families of patients being treated at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the U. hospital or one of its clinics. Patients themselves stay there as well when they are awaiting an organ transplant, being treated for cancer, undergoing rehabilitation or, like Lukasik, still requiring outpatient care for burns.

The families pay from $36 to $47 per night, depending on the length of the stay, and the hotel can bill insurance if it happens to provide coverage, said Adrienne Wilson, lodging manager for the Huntsman institute and manager of the hotel.

Financial assistance is available for those who can't pay. "There should never be anybody who can't stay because they can't afford it," Wilson said.

The hotel has a fitness room, breakfast each morning, and a swimming pool that will be open each summer. Shuttles can carry family members to the U., and a TRAX stop is about a quarter-mile away. The hotel has a pantry stocked with staples so that each guest family gets a bag of groceries to begin their stay, Wilson said.

"We are here to support the caregivers," she said.

The hotel was the initiative of Ben Tanner, chief operating officer at the cancer institute, who saw a need for more than the 16 apartments the institute has nearer campus. There is no elevator in that three-story building, and that makes it difficult for some families.

John Sweetenham, executive medical director at Huntsman, said any patient family has difficulties, but those whose homes are far away have even more.

"It's unimaginable the challenge that poses," he said.

Thirty percent of the U. hospital's patients come from farther than 100 miles away.

Rachel Lukasik still wears gloves over her hands and her right leg is wrapped over her sweat pants. She shows off her rose-colored midriff, where new skin has grown to replace that grafted onto her burned legs and hands.

The girl was burned over 40 percent of her body Sept. 2 when the sight-seeing Cessna she and her grandparents were in flew through heavy timber and a fuel tank ruptured. It was already on fire when it went down about 60 miles south of Great Falls in the Little Belt Mountains, said Rod Lukasik.

While the pilot and Rachel's grandfather kicked out the plane's front window to escape, Sue Majerus unbuckled her granddaughter and pushed her through the window before the flames engulfed the downed plane, Rod Lukasik said. His mother, he said, saved his daughter's life but died in the flames.

Now Rachel is eager to get home to see her grandfather. "The last time I saw him, we were both on fire."

kmoulton@sltrib.com

Twitter: @KristenMoulton