Health care experiences in Cro

[totalcroatia]

Am writing a piece on my site about health care in cro and was wondering what experiences, good and bad, you have had. In general, my experience has been pretty positive - impressed by the helicopter assistance when my father-in-law fell off a wall at 0530 while watering his tomatoes, they dealt with the internal bleeding well. Drugs seem cheap and available from the pharmacy and the dentistry is very affordable and of a high quality.

Childbirth was pretty good first time round, although my one (major) gripe surrounds the birth of our second child, who seemed to be yanked out, causing a broken clavicle and bruising and nerve damage to the arm. My main gripe is what happened afterwards - paediatrician (only one on the island, so no choice) insisting we go for a brain scan and start reading up on cerebral palsy, while a physio friend of ours insisted it was a physio rehab issue. When we chose the latter route (and eternally grateful to her for this), my wife was castigated by the paediatrician, made to feel an irresponsible mother, and told in no uncertain terms that her daughter would never lift her arm above shoulder out.

Two years of physio later, she may never bowl the Aussies out bowling left arm over the wicket (although who knows, given the current series), but she is 95% of where she should be and improving every day. I hate to think where we would be had we gone down the brain scan, cerebral palsy route.

Overall, thought, I would give a thumbs up to the health system here, from my limited contact. Your thoughts and experiences welcome. And if anyone has more detailed info on the practicalities of a Brit needing hospital treatment (beyond the show the passport bit), would be interested to hear from you.

Cheers Paul

[ray51]

There is another Paul , on this Forum , a Brit , who had quite a bit of serious exposure to clinics , hospitals , operations and suchlike , in recent times ;
perhaps he'll comment , too , sometime , or the other ;
from what I had to find out , by some demanding/argumentitave
research is : for many a chronic/random health condition , a number of prescription drugs which are easily attainable in W.EUrope are NOT on schedules of Croatian dr's / pharmacies ;
on demand , one can import those ( if approved , by allmighty Kosor's gov't of bureaucrats ) via a pharmacy/broker , upon prescription , from Germany ( usually ! ; don't ask me : why ;
the Zagreb pharmacists don't appear to recognise any other country in the world , even though neighbouring SLOvenia has most or all of those , easily available ) ;
the final cost to the patient , for such import , would appear to be 300-500%higher than the BeNeLux price .
Not to worry , I see Milan Bandic earlier today on HRT ( 14.00 , with Stankovic ) say all is swell in Zagreb , anyway !

[Madgolfer]

Agree with Ray, if anyone is in a position to give a direct, first hand experience reply to your quetion it would be Rib.

For my own part, all experiences from local GP, local and Zagreb hospitals and dentistry have been very good and when we have paid privately, for dentistry for example, it has been very inexpensive.

Being able to get an appointment with your GP for when you want (need) it is a very novel experience. ;D

[ray51]

Dec 6, 2010 0:55:00 GMT 1 Madgolfer said:

Being able to get an appointment with your GP for when you want (need) it is a very novel experience. ;D

Not where I live now ( Bruxelles ) , nor where I lived since earliest 70's ( Switzeland , South Africa , Surrey , Dubai...) ;
it seems , only some parts of the U.K. are afflicted , what the Daily Fail regularly calls "postcode lottery".

[Carol]

Good things in the Split area:-
1.same day appointments
2. extensive testing... it seems that cost is not a consideration

bad things in the split area:-
1. badly signposted hospitals
2. resident annual health insurance must be paid every month but the documentation arrives so late that cover is only available for approx 8 or 9 months per year
3. there's a lot of requirements for patients to walk/ drive from place to place collecting pieces of paperwork
4. doctors are a little old fashioned in that they do not see any point in speakign to the patient to relay a diagnosis or treatment plan. they are often very rude too.
5. Medical staff have a bit of a chip on their shoulders that foreigners can get treatment in Croatian hospitals (i.e. they do not consider what the word "reciprocal" as in reciprocal health agreement means)
6. corruption - sorry to those who will be offended by this but I personally know of several times when treatment was withheld until a series bribes totalling hundreds or thousands of euros would be paid. On three occasions the delay threatened the patients lives, so I am not talking about trivial, comfort-type stuff (although that is obtained by bribes too).
7. the condition of the hospital buildings is poor
8. compassion, respect and privacy are unknown concepts as far as the medical staff are concerned
9. there is that annoying little 14kn tax that is applied at every available moment.

[newhere]

Hey Paul, How's it going mate?

I gotta say, in my experience...I just don't trust the Health System here (in Zagreb anyway!)

I don't mean to generalise, I know I can't tar everyone with the same brush.

The biggest chunk of Paranoia comes from knowing that eastern europe was the biggest buyers of forged University Degree's...and there was a newer demand after the fall of Yugoslavia.
Nepotism, Bribery and Favouritism was rife to make sure friends and family got the best jobs, even though they are not qualified...something that you can still see today.

Not going into details and these are just some from the top of my memory:

When my wife was pregnant, she got told so many different conflicting things by different doctors that turned out to be nothing more than depression ailments.

It seemed like doctors would say bad and discouraging things about another just to get your custom.

Our mixed race baby was diagnosed by a doctor to have Jaundice because its skin was yellowy.

we was told to take our daughter for a brain scan because she was a bit quiet.

A doctor looking at my perforated eardrum (a really old case) tried to seem like he knew exactly how to cure it, instead the treatment went like this: pay for appointment for him to look...he would then say stuff like "A-ha", or "I see...you need to take a course of (so and so) antibiotics"..then off I go to spend nearly 100kn or this stuff....after 10 days I go back, pay more money for the appointment...he looks, (says his probably rehearsed lines) and sends me off to do the above stuff again.

Had a fractured tooth....the first dentist couldnt find it so they sent me off to get an x-ray, came back and they still couldnt find it...so they wanted to send me away again to pay for a more expensive detailed scan
When I told them I will go elsewhere, they "invented" stories that it could be this tooth, or it could be that tooth and i need to get it done urgently! (and of course pay lots more money)
Second dentist, couldnt find it despite then x-ray...and then proceeded by stabbing my gums under each tooth until they found the right tooth (what pain!)
the anesthetic did not work, but she decided not to ask me and got to work...she only stopped as I cried out...3 more anesthetics injections and still didnt numb, so I had to return the next week...her procedure to "kill" my tooth was quite painful at times and she never warned me when the painfull bits would come, so I really dont know if she knew herself! so in total just for that procedure it took 4 weeks and a 1,500kn bill...oh...and they also said because my gums were a bit dark in places, I should go for a blood test because it could be fatal (I am a black man and black people have darker gums than white people...real doctors know that,dont they?)

So what I have experienced is a lot of people that try to sound more clever than they are...a lot of "scaremongers"...and of course the "money grabbers"

And, Hey...they are just some of my stories, you should hear some of the locals tales

[Carol]

my son was two and a half when he cut his chin open one day. The doctor sewed it up - 4 stitches - without any anaesthetic. I still remember his cries and the pleading look when he wanted me to rescue him. it took five adults to hold him down.

My older son was three when he got sick one day. The local ambulance sent us to the hospital where he was diagnosed by a doctor has having either "tonsillitis or appendicitis" (same symptoms apparently (rolling eyes emotion). They wanted to keep him in hospital overnight but neither parent was allowed to stay even though he didn't speak a word of Croatian and his English was still babyish. I insisted on taking him home unless I was allowed to stay with him and I was bluntly told that I was a bad parent and the doctor refused to give me any guidance on how to care for him or when to take him back should things get worse. We were seriously contemplating driving through the night to Austria. I think that was the point that I decided I didn't want to live in Croatia.

One of the girls who worked for us was in Split hospital giving birth. The nurse/ midwife listened for a heartbeat and casually told her that her baby had died. Obviously she was distraught but then she realised that she could feel the baby kicking. So she argued back at which point the nurse tapped at the monitoring equipment and shrugged saying that the equipment was broken.
These are the relatively trivial stories. i don't want to put the more serious ones on out of respect for the families involved.

[totalcroatia]

Ok thanks for that - interesting. Can't find Rib's thread on his experience - can someone post a link?

[capio]

I was rushed into a Zagreb hospital with abdominal pain... I had no idea what the pain was... but having since broken my ribs and fractured my back it remains by far the most painful experience of my life.

As I entered the hospital in agony with a native Croatian speaker. The receptionist originally refused to admit me, despite the fact we explained I worked full time in Croatia and had health insurance. Regardless of the fact we have a reciprocal health agreement. After the longest15 mins of my life arguing in the most incredible pain I convinced her I am entitled to treatment.

I was seen very quickly by a junior Doctor... the equipment was so out of date I was shocked. (I'll come back to this later). I was quickly diagnosed as suffering from Appendicitis and was amazed and impressed how quickly I was being prepared to have my appendix removed. That day ... that certainly wouldn't happen in England.

After some pain relief I managed to get a little clarity in my thought process and asked for a second opinion from a senior surgeon who I suspect only looked at me because I'm a foreigner. After 10 seconds he said I didn't have appendicitis and it was a kidney stone. He was indeed correct... something I attribute to drinking tap water there from lead pipes.

So I was almost operated on incorrectly, treated shabbily by the receptionist and the equipment was archaic.

I also noted that the Doctors spent the vast majority of their time filling in reports rather than treating patients. Very communist.

The problem with Croatia is anybody with any type of authority automatically considers them self a God and beyond reproach, a dangerous trait when their diagnosis could save your life.

Regarding the equipment... at the time I worked for a company who represented Philips ... we attempted to sell their medical scanners for the same price as the crappy old scanners they were buying now which had about 20% of the functionality.

The Doctor told me as clear as day, he'd love to but the then Health minister owns the company who imports the out of date and overpriced Hungarian scanners.

This my friends... is the real Croatia... and that corruption is why the people suffer.

[prkbrk]

Sorry to hear about all these 'negative' experiences- having worked in healthcare for well over 30 years and having 'opened up' hospitals in the UK/ Mid East (and hired literally thousands of doctors from around the globe) I can say that the healthcare (and I have used dental and hospital facilities) quality is quite acceptable- if you want to moan about healthcare go to the USA.

[siriwan]

I hated every minute of my stay at the Karlovac hospital...

- I was clearly pregnant and because "they couldn't see anything", it was fantasy on my part.
- I was treated like an animal, not being told what was going on even though I asked many times
- didn't get blood results until I got the bill many days later and PAID it...
- dirty examination room (there was a tray with a very bloody cloth and instruments from the patient before me, not removed before I entered the room) and dirty change room for the ultra-sound (blood on the floor, didn't bother to clean them up)
- poor hygiene, very third-world sanitary installations, very very uncomfortable beds (and I slept in many dirty and uncomfortable places...)
- some nurses were very good but some other were devils in white :-)

Went to the local doctor ONCE to get a prescription for blood test to check out my diabetes. He was ok, I must have scared him because I told him straight when I got in and handed in the papers from the hospital that there was no way I was going to take the drugs they wanted him to prescribe :-)

Dentist here is very good and cheap and equipment is pretty good too.

I must say I haven't got much experience from other places myself, having only spent 2 days in hospital in Belgium when I was 4 to get my tonsils removed, 1 night in South AFrica after my freak accident there and 2 hours for a small operation in Belgium...

But my family in Belgium has been through a lot and I don't have a particularly glossy picture of the medical world. So I guess the problems that could be a bit more particular to Croatia are mostly that of considering the patient as stupid and not saying what is going on, and the old equipment. My roommate in Karlovac swore she'd never go there again either but recommended other places in Zagreb as cleaner and more respectful of patients, etc. µ

Oh, and by the way, I had a scanner done in Belgium over a year ago, after what looked like a gallbladder attack here in Croatia. I'm not one who rushes to the doctor and so treated my "attack" myself (ie resting..) That runs in my family, basically all of the women on my mum's side have had it removed.

I went to the doctor in Belgium and all the signs were leading him to gallbladder problems too. Except the doctor interpreting the scanner didn't see anything and said it wasn't that. I must say that same doctor told my dad, 25 years ago, that his heart was a bit bigger on the left but that it was normal since he was left-handed... right. My dad had a normal heart attack that had turned massive because he was treated for... tendinitis. Talk about trusting the medical world...

But maybe that's because Belgium only has prostitutes and brothels, so doctors treat more HIV and fewer heart attacks or gallbladders?

[gmh]

I'm not one who often gets sick so I haven't myself been to a Croatian GP all that often. I have taken my kids there quite a bit and am pleased enough with the way they deal with things. The only gripe I have with state doctors at medical centers is that you can't make an appointment. You turn up, and wait until it's your turn. It must be very frustrating for those who work 9-5. I gave up waiting for an eye spet at the hospital once.
I've been to the emergency room 3 times and each time I've been dealt with quite well. Twice it was just a few stitches on fingers and the doctors spoke english and treated me well, in fact there were a bunch of young attractive female interns who seemed very interested in my well being.
Another occasion I need some head scans to determine if I'd suffered any major head injury due to a beating by the police, and they did it free of charge even though I didn't have valid health insurance at the time.
My wifes pregnancy went smoothly and safely and they even let me be at the birth despite the fact I hadn't done the required birthing course before hand.
Have only been to the dentist a couple of times and the only thing I found odd is they don't give you pain killers before drilling ! Which probably wouldn't have been so bad had they mentioned this before starting to drill. It's an acceptable pain level though.

Over all, yes the equipment and surroundings looks less than modern but my family and I have received prompt good treatment, by competent caring doctors.

Just recalled I did have one bad experience at the Krk medical center when I had food poisoning and couldn't stop vomiting. They labeled me as 'just a really drunk guy' and made me wait a long time before treating me.

[3lions]

Dec 8, 2010 22:41:33 GMT 1 siriwan said:

I went to the doctor in Belgium and all the signs were leading him to gallbladder problems too. Except the doctor interpreting the scanner didn't see anything and said it wasn't that. I must say that same doctor told my dad, 25 years ago, that his heart was a bit bigger on the left but that it was normal since he was left-handed... right. My dad had a normal heart attack that had turned massive because he was treated for... tendinitis. Talk about trusting the medical world...

But maybe that's because Belgium only has prostitutes and brothels, so doctors treat more HIV and fewer heart attacks or gallbladders?

You are really beginning to put me off Belgium

[ray51]

Dec 8, 2010 22:41:33 GMT 1 siriwan said:

But maybe that's because Belgium only has prostitutes and brothels, so doctors treat more HIV and fewer heart attacks or gallbladders?

To this , I relate , briefly , my last 3 experiences with surgical procedures , in 3 countries :

- Belgium ( discectomy ) - a few years' ago , after some days and nights of excruciating lower-back pain , emergency at Hopital Moliere-Longchamp prescribed a CT scan , which was done next day ; after diagnosis of a hernia troble , a room and the theatre were booked instantly , for next day ; loadsa morphium patches helped a bit , in the interim ;
after preparations and anaestethics , I was operated on , by a Polish prof. dr. , well-acknowledged author of texts on such procedures ;
woke up , zoombied , in a huuge room ( big enough to play top-class table tennis ) , single bed , 66 cm TV with over 50 international programs , lovely nurses in and out every now and then ... in the next days , the ample food was about edible , all sorts of press were on hand , then they re-thought me : how to walk again ...not too bad , akshually , eventually cost me : next to nothing !( in money i.e. , but don't forget the inconvenience and all the pain and discomfort/s , before , during and after ) ;

- England ( adenoma ) - before this , I had a scare with an ugly , painful lump , just below my chin ; had to be in London at the time , on some biz and also was still on BUPA Int'l , so : went to GP off Harley St. ; a tumour , malignant or not , was suspected ; so , he sent me into clinic for CT scan and referred me to a surgeon ; the surgeon booked a nearby hospital ( Princess Grace , just off Marylebone Rd ) , operated on my neck the next morning ; when I came to , the room ( single bed ) was out of kitsch house glossy magazines , all chintz and faded crap , but the same evening I was allowed a fab sirloin steak and half-bottle of St. Emilion ; not a bad experience , after all ! ( Walked out a happy chappie : next a.m. ) ;

- HRvatska/Croatia ( tonsilectomy ) - I was told that I had to have it , in my later years ; I was also immediately told that I was sooo Lucky , because my dr. "managed" to get me into Zagreb military hospital , for this "simplest" of ops ; in the event , I was in a room with 11 or 13 other men , some seriously injured or invalided , from army pursuits ; the beds were pre-war or what you see in B/W movies , so was all the rest of the visible gear , the food was revolting , nothing at all to do while waiting for the procedure ( which wait took another 2 days ) ; after the op , waking up , I was helluva unwell , but had noone to relate such stuff to ; must have been some botch-up as next I passed out in the early evening , after which the ( too ) many men around me somehow got the emergency help , due to too much blood from my mouth , onto the bed-linen and the floor ; had to be rescucitated and receive massive blood transfusions ( difficult , as my blood group seems to be quite rare ) ; then I had to have a "corrective" 2nd op , spent almost another week in that hell of a jail ; made me wary of medical profession : ever since !
There you have it , in shortest version ; cheers !

[3lions]

...well I hope you are OK now ray, but one of the most important phrases to remember in life is "trust me I'm a doctor", they can save your life or