A couple days ago the LL started showing signs of an eye infection. After some emailing back and forth with my physician sister-in-law and a phone call with our home pediatrician, we decided we needed to get her seen here in Spain. Here are some of my takeaways from that experience.
When we started to see signs of illness in the LL, we of course were worried about her. We never like it when she's sick. But an eye infection is nothing to freak out about. But we were mildly freaking out nonetheless. Not over the illness itself but the anxiety about locating and interacting with a pediatrician in a place we're not that familiar with.
By way of history, we've traveling to foreign countries a lot. And many have been less developed than Spain. But we've been fortunate to never need a formal interaction with a health care provider in the sum total of months and months of time abroad. The nearest miss was the very first trip Jana and I took together to Peru. She got food poisoning of some sort and was really sick. But we had a physician friend in Lima who made an informal house call and gave us a course of treatment. It was a very informal encounter.
So given our lack of experience with this sort of thing previously, we were a little nervous about how it would go. Before we came I did a bit of research about possible pediatricians if the LL got sick during our time here. We figured the probability was pretty high given her previous rate of illness and the fact that she'd be in daycare here. But my main goal with that initial research was just to make sure there were sufficient providers in case we needed them. Yesterday, we had to actually commit to a doc and make an appointment.
My first call was to our US insurance company. We have coverage when abroad and they have a worldwide network of providers, so I thought they might be able to help. They were zero help. They seem not to have ever heard of Oviedo. I guess that's one of the reasons we picked this place but thanks for nothing Blue Cross.
After this call I got more serious about seeing what internet resources I could find to help us out. Turns out there are many many websites in Spain that help people find doctors. I identified several docs with actual user reviews. We found one pretty close to our place, figured out they had a website. It looked pretty good, so we called them up. Now realize that Spain has a dual health system. There is a public system that is essentially free and a private system where people can buy supplemental private insurance (sort of like Medicare in the US, but for everybody, a gross simplification I'm sure). Many of the docs work in both parts of the system. The doc we found took private insurance, but the way we had to do it was pay out of pocket and we'll hopefully get some partial reimbursement after I file a claim with our US insurnance. We're supposed to have standard out of network coverage while abroad.
So, based on the fact that there is a dual public/private system here, some might be imagining how long we had to wait to see this doctor. Or how antiquated the facilities were. Or one of a hundred other horrors that would occur inevitably in a country with government-provided health care. (Begin sarcasm) Well, wait we did. We called in at about 4:45 in the afternoon. The doctor could not see us until 5:30 later that same day. Totally unacceptable. The horrors of a single-payer system! (End sarcasm) That's as well or better than we do at home.
Once in the office, which was in an older building but was as nice as most institutionalized office buildings I've been in, we had to wait a while. It was about 45 minutes before we actually met with the doc. That, actually, is about how it works for a sick visit with our doc in Knoxville, too. And once we met with the doctor, the examination went just like it does in the US. He reached the diagnosis of pink eye. Maybe bacterial maybe viral, so an antibiotic and an (optional) anti-inflammatory were prescribed. We paid 70 euros for the visit. About 100 dollars. That's about half what it would have cost out of pocket at home. And the LL got a little stuffed animal with a pharma logo on it as a gift. We were on our way.
Now we had to get the prescription filled. We started the LL on dinner with Jana and I went out to deal with gathering the meds. Who knows how long this was going to take and how much it was going to cost. One of the drugs was brand-name. And our coverage abroad doesn't include scripts. Here we go. I walked about two blocks to a pharmacy. Walked into the place prepared to ask whether I should wait there for the prescription to be filled or whether to go down the street to the ham store (I admit I chose this pharmacy in part for its proximity to the ham store in case there was a wait). The pharmacist looked at my prescriptions, and quickly walked back to the storage area. Came back in about 20 seconds, my assumption now being that they did not have one of the drugs. I'm ready to ask how long the wait would be or even whether I needed to go to a different pharmacy. She had the medicines with her already! Now, the part I was dreading. Paying. How much was this going to set me back. I have my credit card ready. The price? 5.99 euros. I thought I heard that wrong. But no. It really did start with a five! No insurance. No discount. That's just what it cost. I happily put my card away and paid cash.
Walked back home, with that whole ordeal taking less than 15 minutes. Jana thought something must be wrong. That was truly surprisingly easy. I'll report again on this issue the next time we're in Latin America. Hopefully not an entirely different scenario there, but I'm guessing things may not work quite so smoothly. We shall see. Anyway, the LL is already seemingly on the mend. She may even be able to go back to daycare before the week is over.
Very Interesting.
ReplyDelete