To ask if anyone has any experience of medical repatriation?

[catgirl1976]

DSis, Dbro and I have long suspected DF has dementia. He has refused to engage with GP or any sort of support for years and his doctors have been useless and said he's fine. He is not. He has barred his doctors from speaking to us after previous attempts to get him some help.

To cut a very long story short he has managed to get himself to Benidorm (he has periods of lucidity) however lost the plot when he's got there. We did not know he was going. First we know is a jumbled call from the Spanish police and from what we can piece together he has landed, got a taxi to the wrong city and wrong hotel, lost all his money, passports etc and 2 days later been picked up by police. The police took him to the right hotel where he sat in the lounge saying they had robbed him at knifepoint and that the hotel was holding him against his will.

DBro flew out there on Wednesday but by the time he got there DF had gone missing again from that hotel. DBro got in to his room and found a key card for the hotel in the wrong city, went there, no sign of DF but his money etc was in the room he was in. DBro collected all of that, went to the right hotel - still missing. Then he was eventually picked up having collapsed in the street after wandering round all day in the heat, confused with nothing to drink.

Since Wednesday DF has been strapped to a bed in a Spanish hospital. This morning they diagnosed dementia (we have been trying to get a diagnosis for about a year so some good news I guess although he thinks he's on a boat in Scotland) and said he needs to be medically repatriated with a registered nurse then admitted to hospital for psychiatric evaluation and care. Amazingly he did take out travel insurance. The consulate have also been quite helpful. DBro is now travelling back having been in Benidorm since Wednesday. He's got hold of the travel insurance people who have passed him on to their complex claims people who will call him. Hopefully they will have some answers.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? How long does repatriation take? Will they take him straight to the hospital in the UK? Who lets the hospital know he is coming? Generally wtf happens next? We've no clue and are just hoping the travel insurance people have all the answers but I just feel so......confused and powerless. DSis will go back out there to accompany him on the repatriation flight if needed but.............I just don't know what happens next. If anyone has been through anything like this any advice would be appreciated.

Have been (well DC) repatriated from a European country. Insurers generally accept European health care professional opinion on diagnosis need/safety to travel. They had their own expert ask a few questions of the local team in our case. But actually more to make sure what they were doing was safe (they kept us longer until save to fly). If it wasn't pre-existing (which it doesn't sound like GP thought it was even if you did) and he took out adequate insurance (be bloody thankful for small mercies) you'll be fine but it will take a bit of time to organise. Dementia wards will try and use the least restraint possible to keep someone safe, but if you don't know a patient well/they are newly diagnosed and out of routine I can see some reasons why more restrictive practice is being used.
I'm so sorry you are all going through this and I do hope this horrible crisis is a gateway to finding appropriate support.

Medically repatriated a family member by charter jet with ER Dr and two nurses from Malta to Cambridge. Repatriation firms can get clearance to land at closest airport to the hospital your relative needs to go to- in this case it was Addenbrookes- if it is thought a lengthy ambulance trip from a London or Edinburgh or Belfast airport might not be survivable. Cost was £18k.

The repatriation company coordinates with the consultant there and hospital director here in U.K. to arrange ambulance and a bed once arrived in U.K. airport. Our jet had room for one relative to accompany with the medical team. The repatriation firm’s flight doctor also does a quick fit to fly check at the origin hospital in Europe before putting the patient on board.

My family member had no insurance. They told the hospital they did and flashed their debit card saying it was a health insurance card. So we had to also pay the hospital bill there as well before he could be discharged to the flight doctor.

My family member wasn’t well enough to fly commercial, had to be a Lear jet. Yours sounds like he may be able to go commercial?

Anyway, once I’d paid the full price, repatriation was done in 3days. It was 5days from initially contacting them.

Thank you all some really good advice on here and I appreciate all the support. Apologies for not updating much just trying to juggle everything

@L3ThirtySeven

Ouch! People on the travel insurance thread should read that!

Sorry OP, sounds like a mess.

I do have some experience in this area, indirectly, as I used to work for one of the BIG insurance companies.

First thing, unfortunately, NO regular commercial flight will accept him. The repatriation, if needed, will be on a private aircraft. That's actually the main reason repatriation is so expensive. A private jet from the EU will be somewhere in the region of 20k, plus the cost of medical staff. If he "has" to be restrained, his insurance will struggle to find any charter that will accept him.

Most likely they will opt to keep him over there until he is stable enough to be safely sedated to enable a repatriation flight. But again, the staff required will be more than just a nurse.

Good luck OP. I'm genuinely appalled by his treatment though. Being strapped to a bed in nothing but a nappy is horrifying, and will increase his agitation and difficult behaviour.

I hope you can get him home soon.

My brother was declared unfit to fly following a deterioration in his mental state.
Mum flew out to him, then traipsed across Europe on the trains with him.
If the airlines won't fly him, train might be a possibility? Probably not given the other I fo you have given, but I guess just a heads up that alternative methods of returning to the UK do exist.

Make sure you get copies of all his Spanish medical notes, and potentially pay to get them professionally translated.

They really should. I couldn’t blame my family member he wasn’t mentally all there. He always travelled with travel insurance prior to this and genuinely was aggrieved that the hospital wouldn’t accept his insurance. He’d gotten aggressive with staff there too and accused them of trying to kill him.

He actually thought he was going to Sicily for a wine tour? But ended up wandering around Malta?

My brother dropped everything and flew out there. He discovered that the travel insurance was actually his debit card and that he had lost his marbles. I arranged the repatriation back to the U.K. while my brother handled everything in Malta. The foreign office was really helpful- they had a list of repatriation firms that were all prechecked so you knew when you transferred funds, it wasn’t a scam.