On moving to Australia it was a requirement to gaining a visa to take out private health cover. As a result we ended up paying a small fortune to our chosen provider for cover it seems we didn’t and don’t necessarily need. For example my wife, discovered after a while that we were automatically covered for maternity but not for an ambulance. I can tell you maternity cover is surplus to requirements.
Why would we need to be covered for an ambulance you ask, especially if you are British? It seems that in some states, of which Victoria is one, you will be charged for an ambulance call-out, emergency or not. The current fee is $1,146, approx £700. This is one of the many features that Australian health care shares with the USA, the fact that nothing comes for free.
Or at least thats how it seems on the surface. Yet there is also the government run scheme called Medicare, which entitles permanent residents and some visitors such as me to subsidised treatment from various practitioners – including midwives, though as mentioned previously we really don’t need that cover – and also it seems free hospital treatment in public hospitals.
And that is what this blog is actually about. Not how shocking it is for a Pom to pay for anything other than a prescription but just how good the public system has been to me, without a cent changing hands (despite my best efforts). As friends on Facebook will know I was attacked by a fish while on holiday over Christmas. Not a shark, which really would have needed that ambulance cover, but a Stingray. As many people have reminded me one of those killed Aussie croc wrangling hero and TV superstar Steve Irwin. Fortunately the one I accidentally stood on didn’t strike me in the heart but the ankle.
As I learned later a Stingray barb is poisonous, while it seems wounds received in seawater are prone to infection. Australians know this stuff, not so Poms. Hence after the pain died down and the wound stopped bleeding I didn’t think much more of it, despite my wife’s suggestion I visit the local ER. She had a point. A week or so later while at a friends cabin in the northern NSW rain forest the ankle in question started to balloon and some really nasty looking stuff began oozing out. The previous week had been spent camping in various beautiful but dusty locations, swimming in creeks and generally getting grubby, like you do when camping. This may have been a mistake.
Now, I try and stay out of hospital as much as I can but for someone brought up with the emergency waiting rooms of the NHS, full of bleeding, drunk, wailing people the Kyogle Memorial Hospital was an unbelievable experience.
There was no one there, in their brand new hospital. It was a ghost hospital, quite surreal in its emptiness. Literally the only people I saw were medical or admin staff. There were doctors, nurses, orderlies, a phlebotomist and a receptionist but no patients, not in Emergency or any where else as far as I could ascertain. No wonder they looked so pleased when I walked in, they were looking for someone new to talk to!
Seen within 5 minutes of registering by unfailingly friendly and helpful staff I was thoroughly assessed, given a tetanus shot a script for antibiotics the size of horse pills and sent on my way 35 minutes later. No money changed hands. Medical cover was not needed apart from reclaiming 50% of the cost of the prescription. If you read the story in the Henley Herald you will realise by now that some journalistic license was used in the retelling of this part of the tale.
Horse pills all popped life returned to normal back in Melbourne…that is until one fateful day a month after the original fish strike. Following a morning yelling at schoolboy rowers in Albert Park the ooze had returned, the ankle was ballooning, this time accompanied by a hard lump on my achilles tendon. There had been some weird squeaking in my ankle earlier in the week but I’d chosen to ignore it. This may have been another mistake.
Limping my way to the GP I reflected that perhaps I should have gone to the doctor when it first happened, perhaps my wife really did have a point. However here I was with a now frowning GP who didn’t like the look of it, not one bit. I’d share a photo of the swollen, puss filled leg but really don’t want to put you off your dinner, needless to say it didn’t look good.
My GP, a young man barely old enough to shave gave me the specified 10 minute consultation as they always do here, accompanied by some prodding and poking and extended bouts of frowning. Yes he was excited to have a patient who’d been struck by a Stingray which isn’t something that happens much in Port Phillip Bay, but he really didn’t want pus all over his nice surgery.
Back under the NHS I would have been given more antibiotics and a referral for a specialist, but my Aussie GP made some phone calls and packed me off to the emergency room at the local hospital. In this case, at the surgery, money did change hands but then half of it was refunded again under Medicare. Non-billing doctors are available under a system called bulk-billing, there’s just not many where we live.
The Alfred is I’m told Victoria’s premier trauma centre, so I was expecting a long wait. But again the waiting room was virtually empty. 15 minutes after arriving I was sitting on a bed waiting for a doctor. 30 minutes later the emergency doctor had seen me, as had the plastics specialist. An hour after entering the hospital I was told a bed was available. Its only because I pleaded to pop home to get some stuff that I wasn’t in that bed within another 30 minutes. In all, between entering the GP’s surgery and being admitted to the ward, hooked up to machines, drip in my arm, listening to the complaints of the bloke beside me, had taken 3 1/2 hours.
Thirty six hours later the surgeon removed a cyst from my achilles tendon and I would have been able to go home within 48 hours, if I hadn’t had a reaction to one of the antibiotics. However I stayed for 4 days with no rush to get me out of the bed. Within 24 hours of leaving The Alfred I had a home visit from a district nurse, in the following six weeks I had 4 clinic appointments and 6 physio appointments, all of which happened within 15 minutes of their appointed times.
My treatment at The Alfred was unfailingly fantastic and friendly, all covered by Medicare and I’d like to thank everyone there who cared for me. My Australian friends tell me that health care is expensive and slow yet my experience was phenomenal, without costing a cent, save the prescriptions.
For me there has been no downside, apart from not actually being able to pay back the hospital for the care I received through the expensive health insurance which would cover the cost. The hospital has no mechanism for my insurance provider to pay them, despite being covered for in-patient treatment. I’ve tried, even speaking to the hospital’s finance team from the ward, but they just don’t have a method for accepting insurance payments once you’re in the system in a public hospital and covered by Medicare.
I’m sure i could have had a very different experience and maybe if I’d been in a real emergency, requiring an ambulance and real trauma my experience would have been different. But why, I have been left asking, do the Australian government insist on health insurance for foreigners on working visas when reciprocal Medicare will cover the cost?
One last thing, when walking out of shallow water on the beach shuffle your feet, it disturbs the Stingrays!
Henley on the Yarra 