RENO, Nev._An insurance company has relented and agreed to let a Reno hospital treat a 5-year-old local girl with leukemia rather than force her to make weekly trips to Oakland, Calif., for chemotherapy.

Government Employees Health Association, which had originally balked at the idea, completed the agreement this week so young Erica Schneider can receive in-network benefits at Renown Regional Medical Center, GEHA communications manager Karen Schuler told The Associated Press on Friday.

The not-for-profit insurer of federal employees based in Independence, Mo. initially insisted Schneider's parents, Paul and Yvette, use an in-network hospital to receive health benefits with annual out-of-pocket costs capped at $5,000 _ the closest being Children's Hospital Oakland, a four-hour drive from Reno.

The young girl's two oncologists, Drs. Robert Rafael and Joseph Torkildson, are based at the Oakland hospital but make weekly trips to Reno to provide treatment to other pediatric cancer patients.

Before the agreement, GEHA demanded that the Schneiders pay up to $7,000 annually if they used Renown because it was not part of the company's network of preferred providers.

Torkildson said it was the first time the doctors had encountered such resistance to securing authorization to treat a patient who lives in Reno. Rafael said he was "furious about the whole situation."

The Schneiders sought assistance from Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the Nevada Division of Insurance.


Jane Overton, GEHA's vice president for claims, told AP on May 8 the company's position was reasonable because the overall costs for the treatment will total hundreds of thousands of dollars and the Schneiders had the option of picking any hospital they wanted if they paid out-of-network costs.

Yvette Schneider said the family could barely afford the $5,000 annual costs and that they would have no choice but to continue making weekly 400-mile roundtrips to Oakland for the two years of chemotherapy.

But after an AP story on the dispute ran the next day, GEHA President Richard Miles announced the insurer would try to reach an agreement with the Reno hospital even though it would cost the company more money.

"We are happy to have reached an agreement that will help the family minimize their out-of-pocket costs. ... We are working closely with young Erica's family and health care providers to see she has the care she needs," Overton said.

Renown spokeswoman Nicole Shearer said she was checking into the details of the agreement and would comment later Friday.

News of the agreement came as Erica and her mother were at the hospital in Oakland receiving treatment Friday morning.

"We're pleased that GEHA responded reasonably," Yvette Schneider said in an e-mail.

"If this deal had not gone through, we would be leaving Oakland today only to return on Monday," she said.

"We always considered it unreasonable that the closest preferred-provider was 226 miles away, when the same doctors treat patients 12 miles away at Renown. With this development, other families insured by GEHA ... will not encounter the same road blocks we did."