This might sound easy at first, but for some it's not so easy.

Your transplant center is your lifeline, it will be your home for what is hopefully a short period, but it will always be your "home away from home" due to the dozens, and dozens, and dozens of visits you'll have in your first year, and likely afterwards. For many people they have difficulty switching centers afterwards and even if they move across the country a center near their new home might not be accepting new relocations. I have a friend who moved to Florida but he still flies back to Minnesota a few times a year for his checkups and care simply because the centers near home wouldn't allow the transfer of care.

I wish I was kidding about how much time you'll spend at your transplant center..

You'll go there for your initial meetings to be accepted there

You'll go there for your evaluation, nicknamed "hell week" by many simply because most people have a dozen or more tests and meetings in a short period of time to be evaluated for transplant. Some days might be an 8AM blood draw, a 11AM meeting, a noon CT scan, and another test at 4PM...meaning long long days of sitting in the hospital waiting for another appointment. You'd think they'd schedule all your tests as close to each other as they can, but remember, many of these providers and medical tests have been booked by other regular patients months in advance, so your pre-transplant team has to try to squeeze you in wherever they can.

Once you're approved for transplant the tests don't stop, you'll have to return for regular labs to ensure you're still healthy (and you won't know it until after, some of the labs are drug/alcohol/nicotine tests to make sure you are compliant with the rules. Not being compliant means not being listed)

If you're approved for transplant by the center, you'll oftentimes need to live within so many miles of the center if you get the call. If you live 10 hours away, you probably won't be able to get to the hospital in time after getting "The Call", so they'll likely require that you relocate. If you're on the list for months, that's many months away from home.

Once you get the call, you have to drive to the center almost immediately. If it's a "dry run" where the surgery is called off for some reason, you then have to drive back home. If the surgery happens, you're going to be living in the hospital for about 2 weeks minimum, but most people are there for about a month which means any family who want to visit you in the hospital will need to drive back and forth there, a 2 hour drive each way turns into 4 hours of driving for each visit, which can be taxing for most people.

Then if you live outside the center's radius (typically about 20 or so miles) you'll need to relocate closer for about 90 days after you're released from the hospital because the transplant team will want you close by for all your required follow up visits (there's a LOT in the first few months!) and in case you have a complication. Your care giver will have to stay with you the entire time, so they might have to relocate with you.

Then considering the dozens of times you'll be going back for routine tests, and to address complications as they come up (it's almost unheard of that someone doesn't have speed bumps along the way).

So it can be a LOT!

My situation was that I live 7 minutes away from the University of Minnesota, so you'd think that's an easy decision, right? Well, when I initially called to make sure that my insurance company was in the network, they said "yes" and when I asked if even a lung transplant was covered under my plan they said "yes". When I went to be evaluated for transplant I discovered that my insurance company has "centers of excellence" for transplants, and they need a center to be a "CoE" in order to be in network. The University of Minnesota was suddenly dropped as a CoE by my insurance company and therefore was no longer considered in-network, and this was specifically only out of network for lung transplants. (Universities are typically research hospitals so they take riskier cases and insurance companies don't like risk...sadly in the USA it all comes down to $).

So even though my yearly deductible and max out of pocket was already met, since the university was now "out of network" there was a $30,000 out of pocket fee to have my transplant there. Wow! We're the average household with a few thousand dollars in the bank, $30k was a real blow to the chest and I looked at other alternatives.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is another good transplant center, and it's a little over an hour south of here, it was in-network so I wouldn't have to pay the $30k. HOWEVER, many trips would mean many hours of driving, my wife and I would have to relocate for 90 days minimum after surgery, and we'd have to find a place to live in a city that fetches a premium for hotel prices. My insurance company would pay a maximum of $5,000 for lodging,

Extended stay hotels START at over $5,000, my wife would lose about 3 months off of work, I'd be recovering in a hotel and not my own house, etc etc etc. Very quickly that option was starting to cost near as much as getting it done at home.

I also had the option of having the transplant covered 100% including lodging by the VA, however, I'd have to relocate to Madison, Wisconsin for the testing and for the time I would spend on the transplant list (which can be months), plus the 90 day minimum afterwards. With my wife taking an unknown amount of time off work, this would certainly cost more and be extremely stressful as other family or friends wouldn't be able to visit or give my wife a day off from taking care of me.

So, the University of Minnesota and a $30,000 out of pocket expense was the best solution.

I'm glad I chose the center close to home. I have a great relationship with my doctors and nurses there and I save a lot of time with all the little appointments that pop up over time. It's August 28th of 2026, 14 months since my transplant, and I'm sometimes back there 3 times in a week, which is a minimum of 6 extra hours through the day where I don't have to be on the road. If you have a job and need to take occasional time off, this can be an additional stress.

So my advice is, unless you have a solid reason to get your transplant elsewhere, choose the center closest to home!