The Beutler Fund: Providing Hope and Lodging for Cancer Patients in Financial Need

Susan Beutler’s story with UCSF starts in 1993 and carries forward to the present day. In 2003, following 10 years of professional acquaintance with the amazing staff of UCSF Health’s Hematology, Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy program, she was privileged to become the patient services manager at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) (now called Blood Cancer United). Susan’s presence at UCSF, carrying out the LLS’s services and programming, continued to grow, as did the relationship with the program’s patients and medical team. In 2008, with the help of the social work team, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society outreach commenced in the outpatient clinic and with hospital patients.

Through this connection, Susan immediately admired the fortitude patients showed while undergoing treatment. Their strength, resolve, and gratitude came through loudly. During these conversations, Susan learned of the financial crisis patients and their caregivers were experiencing due to the high cost of lodging in San Francisco. Patients with limited income were traveling hundreds of miles to and from the city for treatments and follow-up appointments. Often their illnesses arose without warning and required treatment to begin immediately, offering no time to save funds or prepare for treatment, let alone to absorb and process the circumstances unfolding before them.

Listening to these stories sparked Susan’s desire and commitment to help in a meaningful and directly impactful way. Further cementing her commitment to this patient community, Susan herself was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2016.

In 2021, Susan’s desire to help was fully realized through the establishment of the Beutler Fund, in partnership with the social work team at the cancer center’s Patient and Family Cancer Support Center. This fund provides lodging support for patients and their caregivers who are struggling financially and whose required treatment is a great distance from where they live.

Since its inception, the Beutler Fund has helped patients initiate care and remain engaged in their follow-up treatments here at UCSF when it would have been financially or impossible otherwise.

“I hope the fund provides some small respite from the overwhelming challenges these patients and caregivers face. Their courage and resilience inspire me.”

We are grateful to Susan for her vision and support of the patient and caregiver population at UCSF Health’s Hematology, Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy program.