The Blood Alliance

Recipient Benefits Plan

The Blood Alliance offers a Recipient Benefits Plan that provides limited financial assistance to blood donors, their immediate families, or specific designees who have received blood transfusions. The funds help recover some of the blood processing fees. These are fees The Blood Alliance must charge healthcare organizations for collecting, testing, and processing the blood products.

The Recipient Benefits Plan was created to give a percentage of those fees back to the donors who so generously give the gift of life and to encourage replacement of transfused blood so there will always be enough available for patients who need it.

There are Three Recipient Benefits Plans

  • Self Plan: Provides benefits for you and your tax dependents based on one donation of blood/blood products within a 12-month period. Benefits will be available for one year following your donation date. A second donation within the same 12-month period extends benefits to non-tax-dependent family members as well.
  • Group Plan: Provides benefits for members of a specific donor group, such as a business, religious, educational, or civic organization. When at least 25 percent of the group's membership donates blood/blood products within a 12-month period, every member and their tax dependents, regardless of whether they donated, are eligible for benefits for one year. If at least 40 percent of the group donates within a 12-month period, benefits extend to the members' non-tax-dependent family members, parents, and siblings. If at least 50 percent of a group donates within a 12-month period, benefits extend to retired group members and their spouses.
  • Special Account: Allows donors to give their donation credit to someone currently using blood products or who will need blood products in the near future. Any Blood Alliance donor can choose to designate his/her donation credit to another individual, as long as The Lowcountry Community Blood Center has an account set up for that individual. Each donation is equal to a unit of blood transfused. For example: A 14-year-old girl is going to have major surgery. Her family asks The Blood Alliance to set up an account and a dedicated blood drive for her. Fifty people donate during the drive, and the teenager uses 45 units of blood during her surgery. The teenager's family receives recipient benefits for each of the 45 units of blood transfused. The other five remain in the teen’s account for a 12-month period. If she does not need additional transfusions in the 12-month period, the five units drop off, leaving a zero balance.

To set up a Special Account
To set up a Special Account or learn more about any of our plans, please call The Blood Alliance at 522-5293.

How Can I Join?
To join the Recipient Benefits Plan, simply donate blood at Beaufort Memorial Hospital or any Lowcountry Community Blood Center donor center, mobile unit, or portable blood drive. Your donation enrolls you in the plan. Your plan benefits will stay active for 12 months after you donate and if you are a regular donor, they will continue to stay active.

If you are giving an autologous donation (giving blood for your own surgery) or a directed donation (giving blood that will be transfused for a specific patient), you will need to donate again to the general community's supply to become enrolled in the plan.

What are the Benefits?
The The Blood Alliance's Recipient Benefits Plan reimburses 20 percent of the total processing fee for blood or blood products charged by The Lowcountry Community Blood Center, provided the plan was activated before the need for blood was established.

Qualified recipients (defined as the donor, donor's immediate family, and specially designated recipients) will receive this reimbursement regardless of the recipient's health insurance benefits. Even if the treatment was received outside of Lowcountry Community Blood Center's coverage area, benefits are available as long as the donation earning the credit was made through The Blood Alliance.

How the Recipient Receives Benefits
Following treatment, the recipient or a designee must fill out a Request for Benefits form (form coming soon). Attach the completed form to an itemized copy of the appropriate hospital bill. Mail or deliver this information to:

The Blood Alliance
Beufort Memorial Hospital
955 Ribaut Road
Beaufort, South Carolina 29902

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