Medical travel benefits for equity and access to care
Provide employees with a benefit that helps them access the medical care they need, even when it takes a journey.
A simplified solution for medical travel benefits
Make healthcare access equitable
Give every employee — wherever they live — meaningful support to reach the care they need.
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Simplify administration
Use a unified platform to manage eligibility, funding, and reporting, with compliance support built in.
Provide personalized support
Meet employees’ needs in the moment with medical care access and a privacy-first experience.
How Forma supports your medical travel benefits strategy
Use Forma to provide employees with a benefit that helps them access the care they need
Travel & fuel
Getting to care may require a long trip — a flight to a specialist, a far drive to the nearest provider, train or bus fare to a facility in another city. These costs add up before any care even begins, and a health plan rarely covers the full cost, leaving employees to absorb the expense of simply reaching the treatment they need.
Forma’s Medical Travel plan covers the cost of getting from home to the point of care, including airfare, train and bus tickets, rideshares, rental cars, fuel and mileage, tolls, and parking. Reimbursements reflect what travel actually costs today, so employees get meaningful support for the full journey rather than a fraction of it.
Lodging & meals
Care far from home often means more than a single day away, and the costs of staying there mount quickly — hotel nights, room fees, and meals for the employee and any family member traveling with them. Without support, those out-of-pocket expenses can become the deciding factor in whether an employee can pursue care in another city at all.
Forma’s Medical Travel HRA covers lodging and meals while employees travel for medical care, including hotel stays, short-term rentals, and meals for the employee and an accompanying family member or companion. That way employees can focus on the care they came for, not on whether they can afford to stay nearby while they receive it.
Access to centers of excellence
When an employee needs a rare-disease specialist, a complex surgery, or advanced diagnostics, the best care is often at a designated center of excellence far from home. The procedure itself may be covered by the health plan, but the trip to reach it may not be. Airfare, hotel nights, meals, and bringing a family member along add up quickly.
Forma’s Medical Travel HRA reimburses the travel itself — transportation, lodging, meals, and local transportation — at amounts that reflect what a real trip costs, for employees and their eligible dependents. Employers set the limit that fits their budget, and support is available on demand through the Forma platform.
Equity, regardless of location
Where someone lives shouldn't determine the care they can reach. Employees in rural areas, in care deserts, or simply far from a provider who specializes in what they need can face long distances to get the treatment others access close to home. When the cost of that travel falls entirely on the employee, location quietly becomes a barrier to care — and access ends up shaped by geography rather than need.
Forma helps employers close that gap by covering the cost of getting there, wherever an employee lives. Reimbursements can be designed to be greater than the low limits built into most health-plan travel benefits, so employees get meaningful support for the actual expenses they incur.
Frequently Asked Questions: FAQs
Forma's Medical Travel benefit reimburses the cost of traveling to receive medical care that is not available near their primary residence — including transportation (airfare, train, rideshare, rental car, mileage, tolls, and parking), lodging, meals during travel, and local transportation to and from appointments. It's designed to cover the travel itself, not the medical treatment, so it complements the care employees are already receiving through their health plan and picks up the costs that plan typically leaves behind.
When medical travel is offered through a group health plan, reimbursements are held to restrictive IRS limits — like a $50-per-night lodging cap — that rarely reflect what a real trip costs, and carriers often require documentation of medical necessity. Forma's benefit is built to help employees get meaningful support with far less friction, and benefits teams get a program that's simpler to administer.
Forma’s most recent research found that employers are funding Medical Travel wallets anywhere from $500 to $6,000 per employee per year, with a median of $3,000 per employee per year. Check out our 2026 global lifestyle benefits benchmark report for a deeper dive into how employers are funding medical travel needs and a range of other use cases.
Yes. An eligible employee can use the benefit to cover medical travel expenses for their eligible dependents, as well as a companion traveling with them for care. Support extends to the people employees are caring for, not just the employee alone.