Hi All

Need some help as a NZ friend of mine, Deane Holland of Waihi (well known Tatooist and Aprillia Racer in NZ) is on tour in Europe, but within a couple of days got injured on a track day and is now in Rijeka Hospital with a broken collarbone, Ribs and Dislocated Shoulder.

He needs surgery within 4 days and wants that done in the UK. Any ideas! Such as perhaps you know a private pilot who'd be willing to fly him back at a reasonable cost. His wife Heidi is battling with the travel insurance to Air Ambulance him back, but still no decision made.

They will stay with us in North Oxfordshire and we would try and get him into a Banbury or Oxford Hospital for repair.

Thanks


Chris

PS: If anyone is in the area and can give Heidi a little support, that would be excellent!

At the risk of being controversial, what makes him think he's entitled to treatment on the NHS if he's from NZ?

The NHS is for people that have contributed to the system, not health tourists from other countries to come and make use of for free!

If for some reason he is entitled then please accept my apologies.

Obviously I don't know the ins and outs of his case but you wouldn't normally operate on any of those injuries. The shoulder would be relocated in the emergency department, fractured ribs don't require surgery and collar bones are very rarely operated on.

Not exactly the helpful response from a fellow bike traveller that we could do with and quite surprisingly xenophobic for this site!

A little help and compassion needed here please, as instead of the dream start to a long awaited, once in a life time trip to Europe, our good friend Heidi is stranded in Croatia with her husband Deane lying in a foreign hospital in quite a lot of pain.

This has been a most unfortunate accident very early on into their trip and they are not out to burden the NHS and have probably never even come across the term "Health Tourists" before and would be deeply hurt and embarrassed to find themselves called that!

As members of the Commonwealth, there is a reciprocal health agreement in place, as there is for UK citizens in Australia and New Zealand. They also have travel insurance that will cover any costs for private hospital treatment, should that be the case and at this time they just want to be in England where it is easier to be understood and where they have good friends, This is the main reason I have posted this thread, as we are just looking for useful suggestions, offers of help and ideas to get Heidi and Deane to England ASAP.

Deane has been unlucky, as the swelling around the shoulder is quite severe and this is where the surgery comes in, as they have to make an incision to widen the shoulder joint before they can relocate the arm, which is at this time just hanging there! Ouch!

I did something similar a few years ago in a remote location much further from the UK than Croatia.
With a broken shoulder I took a scheduled flight back to the UK, via the Dubai hub i.e. making a change of airline there. This was as a "walking wounded" case with my arm in a sling - so long as the casualty can walk onto the aircraft then no one really cares.
My injury was operated upon exactly two weeks after the incident occurred.

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Dave

Hi Dave

That was a concern and thanks for the useful info about "walking wounded". The Hospital have agreed to strap him up and give him some strong painkillers to get through the flight and I will collect them from the Airport when they arrive in my mate's campervan.

Have got some good prices ranging between £55 to £70 each for one way flights via Easyjey, Ryanair and Jet 2, so they may be able to fly out this Saturday.

Cheers

Chris

Chris,
Get him to A&E asap on arrival.
Say nothing about where the accident occurred.
Just answer questions as circumspectly as possible.
A&E staff, in my experience, are very good about this aspect. Their function is to save life and limb and not be concerned about the cause, but medical diagnosis will be interested in the cause in as far as it assists with the diagnosis.

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Dave

I suppose the only good news is they have plenty of cash as its the beginning of their trip??

I got my brother back to the uk with broken bones from west Africa using std plane travel. If it was me I would fill up on pain killers, get a big people carrier to the airport and use the money on a first class ticket with a big reclinable seat.

Croatia is only a short time away. Never knew we had a Aussie/NZ health agreement..lucky for him I guess.

If not try companies at small airports local to you for private planes.

Bare in mind that anything they do off their own back the insurance won't pay for....they have their own systems and workers.

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Facebook " Kevin Heike " come and say Hello as we travel around the world.

Just read your last post.... Easyjet or Ryan air!, sod that. No room to move or get comfy.

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Facebook " Kevin Heike " come and say Hello as we travel around the world.

I'll have to ask the Barmy Army this has they are loaded into our Ambulances by the dozens & taken off to our Hospitals for treatment, after night on the piss after a game, I suppose we can ask the British Sailors if there entitled to our hospital & rescue facilities before we pull them out of the drink !

I really think a retraction of that Statement is in order !

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....rather Die Living.....than Live Dying !
www.globetrekkers.net.au

Hi xfiltrate and rosa del desierto

You two must have some amazing stories and thanks for the kind words and touching advice and glad you made it to your ranch, after all that time, which must have been a painful time to go through and hope rosa del desierto made a full recovery.

Believe it or not, we are great friends who haven't met yet They have been planning this trip for years and we have both booked the same Hotel in Bristol for this Saturday night, as Heidi is a guest judge at a Bull Terrier show and we were looking forward to meeting up and showing them round and then they were coming back with us to stay in the Cotswolds for a couple of days before heading home in July. As a bike dealer in the UK, Deane bought three Aprilia RSV's off me and on each occasion sent me £7,000 to cover buying the bikes and shipping them off to NZ, all based purely on trust! Hence the bond. I also have a Pan European ready for them to use while they are here, but I guess that won't be needed now!

About staying in Croatia, this is definitely a consideration, as this is a comment in Heidi's last message: " Apparently the doctors here are pretty well regarded if it comes down to it. I also have a room that I can rent here " She has the landlord of where she is staying going to the Hospital now, acting as translator, so as you say, the Croatians are very warm friendly people, as I found when I hitched through there in the 70's when it was still all Yugoslavia.

They will be reading these posts and I'm sure will find your advice very helpful.

Will have a look on HU to see if you have any adventures on there written down!

Take care

Thanks

Chris

Hi Keith

Thanks for your words of encouragement and advice on checking in when they arrive at a UK Hospital. We know some of the staff in Banbury and should be able to get him admitted there OK.

Glad to hear that the NZ Health Service looked after you so well after your spill and hope you mended well. Must have been a great trip though, even with the unhappy ending, but we all know what can happen and that if it does, it's just part of the trip!

Hi Paul

Fully agree with your comments and the thought of the Anzac loyalty, assistance and sacrifices in the past did pass through my mind, but didn't want to get drawn into a pointless argument!

Will let the Brazilian Health Service treat the Barmy Army this time round and hope they have a good supply of peroxide bleach in to scrub into all the wounds they are due to receive! I bet they won't winge about NHS treatment after that!

All the best

Chris

did you get my private message? If not pm me and I will ring my friend with a plane and licence.....

As mentioned above, we - the UK - have a reciprocal health agreement in place with New Zealand [and Australia], which means citizens from both countries are legally entitled to free publicly-funded health from each others' national health services.

Thank goodness the agreement exists, because guess what? .. in 2006 I crashed on a gravel down at the bottom of South Island, NZ, which resulted in similar injuries to Deane's. I broke my collarbone in two places; ribs and fingers broken .. and worst of all, I managed to smash-up my left wrist pretty badly.

The Kiwi system, however, did me proud:

• A free 80 km St John Ambulance emergency ride to Invercargill Hospital
• Superb in-house specialist orthopaedic surgery + anaesthetist services to fix my wrist - free
• Excellent inpatient nursing care and accommodation for four days and nights. [Shame about the grub though, which was nearly, but not quite, as bad as the stuff dished-out in our UK hospitals! ] – again all free
• Top-notch follow-up outpatient treatment .. totally free.

I say to all Kiwis [and Aussies]: as a UK taxpayer all my life, please make full use of our NHS system if you need it. As far as I'm concerned, you are all more than welcome.

Thanks

Keith
.

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Right Way Round ...

A piss poor attitude !!!

Reciprocal health agreements | Ministry of Health NZ

In short;

Reciprocal health agreements.

New Zealand has reciprocal health agreements with Australia and the United Kingdom (UK). Under each, certain services may be publicly funded for people covered by the agreements. Those services may be funded to the same extent as for a national of the country they’re visiting or staying in temporarily.

xenophobic?
interesting assumption as I am married to a non UK national! Also, I didn't mention anything about nationality, race, colour, religion or anything else that would possibly quantify someone as xenophobic. I said people who have paid into the system. They might be white, black or green and come from mars.


note the part in the recipricol arrangement

for a condition that arose after arrival into New Zealand, OR became, or without treatment would have become, acutely exacerbated after arrival.

for New Zealand substitute UK, as it's a recipricol agreement

BTW I have worked in the NHS for 25 years. I also worked in aeromed for several years bringing back damaged holidaymakers from abroad, so I probably have a bit more insight into this the some of the more hysterical, but not entirely unexpected, reactions to my post. I have also seen many members of the 'barmy army', or just regular holiday makers who have come back from abroad (even from Europe) having had to pay for treatment, received no treatment, or received extremely substandard treatment. The main moral of the story, is get good insurance that covers you for everything you will be doing.

whether he gets treatment will depend on how carefully the hospital he visits checks peoples entitlement. I would suggest avoiding the London ones as they are the most keen as they suffer most from the health tourist issue. I have seen people present at my hospital for treatment because they have been turned away by London Hospitals.

My statement stands and I will not be retracting it. It is not an opinion, it is a statement of fact. If you don't like it, well, sorry, that's reality for you. It is not a service for foreign nationals who have injured themselves in other countries who should be carrying the appropriate insurance for the activities they are taking part in to be either treated in that country or aeromedded back home. Maybe they don't recognise the term health tourist because they don't get them in New Zealand, but in this country it is a significant problem.


I wish your friend well in his recovery, but it is not the responsibility of the NHS to deal with that. It is already stretched to treat those that are entitled. Whether he gets treatment or not is of course, a different matter. He may, (in fact, probably will) but he needs to be prepared for the fact that equally he may not.