Private Vs Public Healthcare in Ireland

GooglePlus

GooglePlus wrote: »

People who are private patients will write off a private hospital over something petty like there not being enough food options.

I'm currently waiting for a heart check that should be quite urgent, but instead i'm left waiting months. If I could go private, i'd be seen in a day, so that option is far better that the public option.

And when you do get seen, it'll be by the same doctor. Have seen it with friends and their kids, and have seen the same thing myself. Personally having consultants using public hospitals for their own private practice is a part of the issue in my opinion.

Geuze

FishOnABike wrote: »

The GMS memdical card does cover hospital treatment in addition to GP visits and pharma but a person would be on a public waiting list for any non-urgent treatment.

Yes, although note that the only two charges for public healthcare in Ireland are:

100 A+E fee
80 pn if you stay overnight in hosp

mariaalice

The best thing to do would get the hips knees and the like done when you are still working and have the high-end health insurance then when you get the GMS card you will be grand.

A chronic condition like age-related heart disease and chronic diabetes you might as well be in the public system being able to see a consultant as opposed to his team won't do much for you.

There is also the like of the national treatment purchased fund so you won't be waiting for your cataract operation.

decky1

mariaalice wrote: »

Accute conditions like cancer it is the exact same, if you have a chronic condition that when you got value from private insurance. I have had treatment in both the public and private systems an the treatment is the exact same however in the private system i got a an ensuite private room in very nice calm hospital.

I got the same type of room in St James.

mariaalice

decky1 wrote: »

I got the same type of room in St James.

It was the only difference i could see that and getting appointments to suit youself and seeing the consultant each time, my brother in law was in a room by himself for a particular reason in a public hospital but it is not the same as the type of accommodation you get in a private hospital, but when you are sick you don't care you just want to get out of there

mariaalice

The big one though, even if you have gold plate health insurance there is no way of skipping A&E unless its is a planned admission.

Diceicle

I had my own experience of the public v private hospitals recently:-

I had a fall and hurt my back, hip, and ribs. Could barely move without wincing in pain - felt like my coccyx had a small fracture. Very painful. I'm not even 40 but getting in and out of a car I was like a 90-year-old. Moving from reclining (like on the couch) to standing was painful and slow.

I managed to get in to see a GP who referred me for scans - Chest and pelvic.

Tallaght wanted me to go to the post office and post them my letter - wouldn't accept an email because of GDPR (wtf?). They would see me in 4-5 days for chest, then come back to them 'after Christmas' for the pelvic scan. It was the start of November when I was speaking to them.

St James' faired slightly better. They would accept the email of the appointment letter (so no consistency in terms of information handling), but IIRC they had a wait of up to 10 days to do the scans.

Ended up going to a private hospital. Was seen the following morning. I expected to wait 2-3 hours, as I'd not gone private before - I was seen, scanned and heading to the exit within 20 minutes.

I'm still perplexed as to how the differences were so stark - is it just patient volume?

babyboom

The big difference between private and public health care is the waiting time to see a consultant and for any follow up procedures/tests.

I have a bowel issue. Was sent to A&E in February. Referred to gastro consultant via public system. Had my appointment in July. I was put on the list for a colonoscopy and was due to have it on 28 November. Endoscopy dept called the day before (after I had started taking the prep) to say A&E had taken the beds and my appt was cancelled. My new appt is 02 January. Now my GP had written to them a few months back to say this test was urgently needed and yet I'm still waiting. If I had health insurance my tests and results would have been done months ago and my condition would not have deteriorated to the extent it has. I may now be in serious trouble. Early detection is the most important part of any diagnosis and those of us relying on the public system are losing out on this.

Mrs OBumble

decky1 wrote: »

I was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010, no private health insurance, taken straight away to St James, where i got the best care and attention.

Glad it worked for you.

I was diagnosed with a pre-cancerous condition.

It took six months waiting after that to get surgery. In that time, pre cancerous had turned to early stage cancer. Great treatment from the public system once I got in but it would have been far more cost effective and less stressful to just treat me more quickly.

tjhook

Diceicle wrote: »

Tallaght wanted me to go to the post office and post them my letter - wouldn't accept an email because of GDPR (wtf?).

GDPR is the new "computer says no". It's rarely applicable to these situations, but a handy excuse for service providers to make their lives easier.

I have private health insurance, wouldn't be without it. If the day comes when the public system is as good, I'll ditch the insurance. I imagine loads of people will.

What I'm not willing to do is continue to pay an annual premium to join what is effectively a public system. If I understand it, that's what the government's proposed "Slainte Care" adds up to.

Gen.Zhukov

My recent experience.
Back issue and had an MRI done within 2 weeks at a place that only does scans if you have HI.
Result sent to doc and there was possibly a very serious problem that needed to be looked into immediately. Doc says I need to go in through the ED (HI no advantage here)

22 Hrs going through the ED before getting into bed on a ward (Fecking nightmare)
During the ED fun the money girl drops by to ask me if I'm going to sign it over to my HI. "What if I do" I asked. "You might get the private room you're entitled to" I'm told.

I decided to think about it as I didn't want to consent to HI Co being billed if I wasn't getting anything special. A different and more honest money girl drops by the next day and tells me there is no hope of getting a private room as they're generally held for infectious cases.

I didn't sign to allow HI Co to be billed. If I had, the HI Co would have been billed, I estimate, about €11.5k and I got sfa in return.
I was talking to the HI Co during my stay and made them well aware that I had saved them a fair wedge. They did pick up the tab for some excess that I would have been due to pay so it kind of worked out.

I'd say there are lots of people that do sign the insurance form and the HI Co's are paying out millions to the various hospitals while getting nothing extra above what the average Joe gets.
There was defo a bit of guilt tripping coming from both of the money girls too, as though I was the b*****ks for not signing the insurance form.
We don't really get to hear much about that though.

Foweva Awone

My experience with public and private healthcare mainly involves my psychiatric health. I have, I suppose, a fairly complicated psychiatric diagnosis and have been hospitalised probably 15-20 times over the past 4-5 years, mostly private admissions but a few public admissions too.

In a private hospital, I have my own consultant who deals with me on every admission, and also sees me as an out-patient every three months. She is extremely skilled and knows me and my family very well. I'm on a lot of medication, which has taken much trial and error to get right, and she also manages the various programs that I've done to get me to where I am today. If I had a mental health crisis today, I'd call her team in the hospital and could expect to have a bed pretty much immediately, on a ward where the nursing staff know me.

Publicly, you have no continuity of care, which is SO important. If I was suicidal and/or self-harming, and sought help in a public hospital, I might or might not be admitted. If I was admitted I wouldn't know any of the staff and they wouldn't be familiar with my case. If I were referred publicly to any programs, you'd be talking about a wait of a couple of years before starting them.

Today I'm well, stable, I'm functioning, I'm a mother to my son, I'm a productive member of society with a good job in Finance, as well as studying part-time. I'm out the other side of it, and am now really, really glad to be alive ... but when I was very unwell and suicidal, if I'd had to rely on the public health services to get me through those couple of years, I'd very likely be dead and buried long ago.

I've seen quite a few friends take their own lives over the past couple of years, all of whom were engaged with the public mental health services, and they got very little help from them. It's very sad that lack of health insurance is the difference between me and them, it's the reason that I'm here today and they're not. Which is incredibly unfair.

Greentopia

pinkyeye wrote: »

This question has occurred to me in response to someone else asking a question about moving to another country.

That would be me. Thanks for starting this thread. I have a few questions of my own I want to ask as even though I'm Irish I have very little experience of the system here apart from a minor operation years ago and GP visits, and I've spent many years in other countries.

1. When an ambulance has to be called they will not go to a private hospital so no advantage whatsoever to having private health insurance.

I didn't see an answer to this question. I don't have private insurance at the moment. Supposing I needed to go to A&E and I decided I wanted to go to a private one to avoid the public A&E queues and trolleys and pay out of pocket, can I do so? Could I ask the ambulance crew to take me there (assuming I'm conscious lol) or would they automatically just bring you to the nearest public hospital?

For me private insurance here is massively devalued if you still end up for days on some trolley in A&E in a public hospital the same as any public patient. I don't live nor want to live in Dublin (no offence, just love the countryside) so wouldn't have the option of being taken straight to the Mater Private or whatever hospital politicans who are on gold plated private cover would be taken to.

I'm sure it must be possible to get private insurance that would cover stays of longer than three months in all EU countries, does anyone have experience of this and could you recommend an insurer that would be universally accepted?

I mean not just for cataracts or hip replacements like the CBD scheme but anything I could have done under the Irish service as a citizen of this country? My partner is from another EU country-Germany and we're soon to decide where we will live together-here or Sweden, but likely I will keep my house here in Ireland and he will return occasionally to visit family and friends in Germany so we will spend time each year in possibly three countries, but likely for more than three months abroad that the European Health Insurance Card would cover so we would possibly need private insurance to cover all countries.

Also, I used the EHIC in both those countries and it works well. Can it also be used if you actually live for up to three months in another country if say you wanted an elective procedure that there is a long wait for in this country-say I wanted to see a Gynae in Germany (can be one year waiting on the public system here) and I stay there up to three months. Would the public German system carry out any follow on treatment necessary or would they refuse as I'm not a citizen with Germany health insurance and tell me I had to wait until I returned to Ireland? I checked for this info online but couldn't find it.

I'm thinking if we split our time correctly between countries we may be able to be covered for everything in the public systems of Germany, Sweden and Ireland without having to take out private insurance at all, but maybe that's a fantasy :pac:

Greentopia

babyboom wrote: »

The big difference between private and public health care is the waiting time to see a consultant and for any follow up procedures/tests.

I have a bowel issue. Was sent to A&E in February. Referred to gastro consultant via public system. Had my appointment in July. I was put on the list for a colonoscopy and was due to have it on 28 November. Endoscopy dept called the day before (after I had started taking the prep) to say A&E had taken the beds and my appt was cancelled. My new appt is 02 January. Now my GP had written to them a few months back to say this test was urgently needed and yet I'm still waiting. If I had health insurance my tests and results would have been done months ago and my condition would not have deteriorated to the extent it has. I may now be in serious trouble. Early detection is the most important part of any diagnosis and those of us relying on the public system are losing out on this.

Must be so infuriating and frustrating to have to wait so long.
I wonder how much a colonoscopy costs getting it done privately without insurance? I always wonder if it's best to save up for any private care I might need out of my own pocket or get insurance.

Hope things turn out well for you and your finally get your appointment on January!

LuasSimon

markjack98 wrote: »

I’m on the parent’s health insurance but

Had an emergency one night and ended up in a public A&E. Spent 12 hours waiting on doctor and was seen for a good 30 seconds and told to come back in 12 weeks.

Obviously not happy with the above so went to a private A&E once they opened the following morning. Was seen to in 5 minutes and emergency consultant sat with me for 40 minutes initially and then I was back and forward seeing him for the day.

At the end of the say he decided to refer me to a consultant for the issue I had. Got a next day appointment with him.

Went to his clinic and he decided to admit me to hospital. He called the ward and there was a private room waiting for me in 30 minutes. Was there for a week and ended up having surgery.

Had to go for a follow up in another private hospital the following week. I was due to be there for an hour. Ended up there for half the day and the nurse was in no rush at all, as far as I know I was her only patient that day.

6 weeks after that I got a letter in the post for an appointment in the public hospital 8 weeks later. For those 14 weeks I wouldn’t of been able to leave my house.

If it wasn’t for the private health insurance I probably would’ve ended up with severe depression. I’m thankful my parents had it and as soon as I turn 25, I’ll be buying it myself.

What’s a private A & E ?? Or where ?

babyboom

Greentopia wrote: »

Must be so infuriating and frustrating to have to wait so long.
I wonder how much a colonoscopy costs getting it done privately without insurance? I always wonder if it's best to save up for any private care I might need out of my own pocket or get insurance.

Hope things turn out well for you and your finally get your appointment on January!

Thanks, it's both infuriating and scary. I feel like I'm living in Limbo all the time. I checked out getting it done privately and it's around 1300 Euros. If it's cancelled again I'll have to take that route.

Greentopia

tjhook wrote: »

GDPR is the new "computer says no". It's rarely applicable to these situations, but a handy excuse for service providers to make their lives easier.

I have private health insurance, wouldn't be without it. If the day comes when the public system is as good, I'll ditch the insurance. I imagine loads of people will.

What I'm not willing to do is continue to pay an annual premium to join what is effectively a public system. If I understand it, that's what the government's proposed "Slainte Care" adds up to.

From what I've read private health insurance will be an optional extra when it's introduced, it will be a single tier universal system that will be tax funded and which will remove private beds from public hospitals so the private sector will have to come up with hundreds of beds for their patients and expand their hospitals and clinics. And it will cost €700 million a year for the next ten years.

Which in Ireland means more like 20 and it may happen so I'm not betting on it.

daheff

I'd be interested to see how much is paid in private medical premiums annually. How far would that go in an all public system?

Cos in a lot of cases the Dr, staff & hospital for private & public are the same

jrosen

We have had HI for years now and tbh never really saw the benefit as thankfully we are all healthy and haven't required it. Until recently. I required a pelvic ultrasound.

Public wait list 18 months, private app 4 days. I paid 180 and then claimed back through my insurance

shesty

I have no problem with having private health insurance and getting good service in private hospitals.

The problem with the health system is that both public AND private patients are occupying beds, surgery times and consultant hours in public hospitals.That is the a large part of the problem with the public system.When the consultant who says you need a procedure done and the waiting list is 10 months will do it within a few days for you, once you meet him on a different day in his office (in the public hospital building) and hand him 150 eur....that is totally wrong.

A lot of people think you need health insurance because the public system is so bad but realistically if we had little or no health insurance and the public system had the staff and investment it needed, the public system would great.The halfway house situation of treating public and private patients in public facilities is just mad.And on top of it we are all paying at least twice, sometimes three times (tax, health insurance and on the spot fee) for the use of the same doctors and rooms (unless you specifically go private like the Beacon or Hermitage, which i have no issue with because they are what they say on the tin, basically).It's crazy.

Caranica

LuasSimon wrote: »

What’s a private A & E ?? Or where ?

Mater private, Beacon, Hermitage in Dublin for starters

martyoo

Caranica wrote: »

Mater private, Beacon, Hermitage in Dublin for starters

Am I right in say that those private A&E's deal with most emergencies unless its heart related?

LRNM

There's no private A&E in the country that accepts ambulance emergencies.

Most private A&E's do not have the capacity to deal with emergencies and resuscitations coming in.
When **** really hits the fans in private hospitals, the first thing they'll do is pick up the phone, dial 999 and call for an ambulance to take you to a public ED.
Private ambulance services generally do not take emergency calls. You could try it but from what I hear you will be declined.


That aside, working in the HSE I would never go without private health insurance. I see the state of the system and the slow errosion or services that has crippled us today.


Several years ago I got a moderate but debilitating injury. Without going into details, I wasn't able to walk more than a couple of blocks without having to stop. I wasn't able to work. I was in bad pain.
Visited GP. Got referral to a consultant in a university hospital, was told waiting list was 1-2 years......
I couldn't WALK or work or function normally. It was horrible.

Rang up 1 private hospital, told the wait was a month.
Rang another private hospital. Was told to come in in 2 days, saw consultant, the next day I was in the operating theatre and discharged that evening.
Thats just one of my own personal experiences.
I see day in day out the people suffering on waiting lists. People with major medical complications and disabilities. Strung out in wards clogged with 10 other beds for months waiting for an available consultation or bed in a specialist hospital.


I don't have exact numbers, but from anecdotes and dealing with specialist units most have <10 beds for the entire country.
Burns units
Spinal injury units
Maxfac
Neurology
The list goes. For each of these wards you have massive demand and every hospital in the country needs to send patients, so you end up with patients in smaller hospitals unable to access the care they need.

This has huge long term recovery effects and I've seen so many people pass away or end up with life changing consequences because they couldn't get the care they need in the public system.

So in that regards. Yes private health insurance is VERY important.
For general hospital things not so much.
I'm as anti privatization as it comes. I never ever ever want to see a US style system here in Ireland.
But unfortunately, the public system has been managed so utterly piss poorly. It's demoralising.


Sorry for rant but I could write a book on it.

Caranica

martyoo wrote: »

Am I right in say that those private A&E's deal with most emergencies unless its heart related?

I went to Mater private for my heart issue, was sent straight to critical cardiac care. Could not have been treated better. They were brilliant at a very scary time. Walked out of there 5 hours later, my issue is currently benign but they insisted my gp did the right thing in sending me there.

I think some of them only operate office hours or thereabouts though.

Greentopia

LRNM wrote: »

There's no private A&E in the country that accepts ambulance emergencies.

Most private A&E's do not have the capacity to deal with emergencies and resuscitations coming in.
When **** really hits the fans in private hospitals, the first thing they'll do is pick up the phone, dial 999 and call for an ambulance to take you to a public ED.
Private ambulance services generally do not take emergency calls. You could try it but from what I hear you will be declined.

So in other words private insurance is useless if you get a heart attack as you might as well call an ambulance yourself (or whoever will call one for you) and be taken directly to the nearest A&E with a cardiac unit in a public hospital. That's what I suspected. I hope everyone who is paying for private insurance is aware of that!

LRNM wrote: »

That aside, working in the HSE I would never go without private health insurance. I see the state of the system and the slow errosion or services that has crippled us today.

If someone who works in the HSE says this it seems there's only one choice-I'm considering what to do about insurance at the moment.
Great little country eh? :rolleyes: the only one in Europe without a single universal system. But Slainte care will be along in maybe 10 years if we're lucky to change that. If it works.

LRNM

Greentopia wrote: »

So in other words private insurance is useless if you get a heart attack as you might as well call an ambulance yourself (or whoever will call one for you) and be taken directly to the nearest A&E with a cardiac unit in a public hospital. That's what I suspected. I hope everyone who is paying for private insurance is aware of that!

If its a serious medical emergency, then yes the HSE ambulance service and HSE hospitals are your best bet unless you can make your own way to a private A&E.

For private insurance its the long term aspect of it, the complications, the extended specialist treatment and recovery that it comes in handy.

Calling an ambulance isn't really what private cover is for, but when you're in a public hospital and need transferring to a private hospital, thats when your private ambulance cover comes in to play.

pinkyeye

Foweva Awone wrote: »

My experience with public and private healthcare mainly involves my psychiatric health. I have, I suppose, a fairly complicated psychiatric diagnosis and have been hospitalised probably 15-20 times over the past 4-5 years, mostly private admissions but a few public admissions too.

In a private hospital, I have my own consultant who deals with me on every admission, and also sees me as an out-patient every three months. She is extremely skilled and knows me and my family very well. I'm on a lot of medication, which has taken much trial and error to get right, and she also manages the various programs that I've done to get me to where I am today. If I had a mental health crisis today, I'd call her team in the hospital and could expect to have a bed pretty much immediately, on a ward where the nursing staff know me.

Publicly, you have no continuity of care, which is SO important. If I was suicidal and/or self-harming, and sought help in a public hospital, I might or might not be admitted. If I was admitted I wouldn't know any of the staff and they wouldn't be familiar with my case. If I were referred publicly to any programs, you'd be talking about a wait of a couple of years before starting them.

Today I'm well, stable, I'm functioning, I'm a mother to my son, I'm a productive member of society with a good job in Finance, as well as studying part-time. I'm out the other side of it, and am now really, really glad to be alive ... but when I was very unwell and suicidal, if I'd had to rely on the public health services to get me through those couple of years, I'd very likely be dead and buried long ago.

I've seen quite a few friends take their own lives over the past couple of years, all of whom were engaged with the public mental health services, and they got very little help from them. It's very sad that lack of health insurance is the difference between me and them, it's the reason that I'm here today and they're not. Which is incredibly unfair.

Can I ask, in your case what hospital/consultant would you be referred to if you have private health insurance?

I'm asking because there's not many private hospitals that deal with mental health.

pinkyeye

No-one has really answered the question I asked in the first place which is "what use is private health insurance when you have to call an ambulance to get to a hospital?".

And why does Leo Vardakar and the likes of him never end up in A&E even when they have to call an ambulance?

I GUARANTEE you Simon Harris will NEVER EVER be in a public A&E.

LRNM

pinkyeye wrote: »

No-one has really answered the question I asked in the first place which is "what use is private health insurance when you have to call an ambulance to get to a hospital?".

And why does Leo Vardakar and the likes of him never end up in A&E even when they have to call an ambulance?

I GUARANTEE you Simon Harris will NEVER EVER be in a public A&E.

Private health insurance is of no use if you need an ambulance in an emergency (aside from interhospital transfers). That's not the point of private health insurance.
When you get to a&e you will be asked do you want to go public or private. It generally makes no difference to your treatment at that stage.

Leo and the likes don't end up in public hospitals because when they have medical issues they most likely have their own doctors and nurses and can simply get chauffeured to a private hospital.
If they had an emergency, i.e couldn't be brought to hospital in a car then you bet they would be brought to a public hospital.


But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a private ambulance specifically for the high ranking politicians. I'd be interested to look into this.

darklighter

pinkyeye wrote: »

No-one has really answered the question I asked in the first place which is "what use is private health insurance when you have to call an ambulance to get to a hospital?".

Its of SFA use when you need an emergency ambulance...…..but as multiple people have explained, you don't get Private Health Insurance for emergency ambulance cover :rolleyes: