Hotels or resorts for children near major cities/ hospitals

[user593]

We’d like to go overseas in September. We have two DC <5. One DC has a rare condition which is very unlikely to need intervention while we’re away but if it did we’d need a hospital with paediatric and surgical specialisms. Does anyone have any recommendations which fit this criteria? Budget is flexible. Thanks!

Malaga? It’s got a decent beach and a quick search says the hospital is a major one.

Majorca has a highly-rated university teaching hospital, within an hour's drive of anywhere on the island. Pretty well nobody ever goes to the mainland for treatment.

How far were you planning to travel? California has world-class medical centres.

Would it depend on travel insurance costs?

@ShrubRose Ideally in Europe but anywhere with beaches and warm weather would be fine.

@PBandJ111 I haven’t looked into those yet but not too concerned re insurance costs or paying for private care if it came to it.

@MinnieMountain @samarrange Thank you! I’ll look into both of these. Do you have any specific hotel or resort recommendations?

For anything really serious, you will be using the public system, and your GHIC will cover it within the EU. You need a GHIC per person, including one each for the children.

Depends on budget, what you like to do, how lively you like it, type of beaches you want, board basis, etc etc etc... I can recommend towns in Majorca on the basis of niceness/price/activities but I don't often recommend specific hotels.

The chic covers basic emergency cater and you may still need to pay an amount. This sounds like complex medical care and you will need belt and braces insurance. Can you get it for an existing condition?

What about Salou? Beach resort one hour from.barcelona? Or stay in Barcelona and get the bus to beach,although Barcelona are a bit annoyed at tourists atm

GHIC covers emergency and ongoing care, as much as needed. If you need dialysis you can get that during your holiday, for example. Only elective treatment ("This place is nice, I think I'll get my hip replacement here") is not covered.

Plus, Spanish public healthcare is free at the point of delivery, like the NHS. A public hospital has no way to take any sort of copayment from a patient directly. I know someone who is in their 6th months of extensive cancer treatment in Spain on a GHIC. Also, private insurance probably wouldn't cover a pre-existing condition like this anyway. GHIC has no exclusions - it just takes your "home" level of public coverage with you on holiday.

OP should of course definitely get travel insurance, including repatriation (which is also not covered by the GHIC), but even then they might not cover repatriation if it's for an emergency caused by a pre-existing condition.

Spain is probably your best option as a balance of decent medical facilities and a holiday destination. Choose a resort within an hour or so of Barcelona perhaps. I'd avoid smaller islands. Get ghic cards each, then call a specialist insurer like stay sure or there might be a recommendation via a charity connected to your dc's condition with negotiated rates. Italy has decent hospitals too if you prefer there and both are around 2.5 flight max.

@samarrange We all have GHICs, I applied when each DC was born and they’re still valid.

We’d be looking for a 4/5 star hotel or resort with nice food and a nice pool for children (DCs would spend all day in the pool if they could). Ideally also with direct access on to a sandy beach (but this isn’t a must have as DC prefer a pool, I prefer a beach). Somewhere where it’s okay to have children but not overly rowdy and with a nice town a short drive or walk away. Budget circa £850 per night but for that I’d hope to have full board (otherwise not bothered about breakfast/ half board/ full board as long as it’s reflected in the price).

I’ve only ever been to Spain for work so really know nothing about it!

@Ohmydreams I’ll have a look at Salou, thank you! I had Barcelona in mind but didn’t know if there’d be any resorts in or near the City.

@mitogoshi Thank you. I hadn’t thought of Italy. I’ll have a look there too.

Thank you for all the comments re medical insurance. I haven’t looked into it yet because I wasn’t sure if we’d find anywhere suitable to visit, but I’m confident we’ll be able to get coverage even if it’s expensive.

The chances of DC needing costly medical care (for example, emergency surgery) is very low, but I won’t be able to relax unless I know that appropriate help is nearby if we need it. It would be our first holiday since DC’s birth/ diagnosis and I’m sure once we have a few holidays away without incident I’ll be much more relaxed.

How rare is the condition? Is it something that a large general hospital would normally be expected to be able to treat, once diagnosed?

I'd look up specific hospitals that have a specialist centre/interest in the particular condition, rather than look for random city names; no point making sure you're near a paediatric oncology centre if you've got a kid with a liver and bowel transplant with a ? on GvH, after all.

For that budget you will have a good choice of all-inclusive hotels in Majorca. Have a look at Booking.com and use the price filters to find nice places. If you might need to be able to get to the hospital in a tearing hurry (25 minutes rather than 55) then look at the towns south-west of Palma (Peguera, Santa Ponsa, Palma Nova, and Magaluf - which is better than its reputation if you stay at the south end - but otherwise pretty well anywhere on the island will be fine.

@samarrange It’s between 1/5000 and 1/10,000 (sorry, trying not to be too outing!). The most likely complication, whilst still unlikely, would necessitate common medication delivered by IV. If anything went severely wrong my understanding is DC could have a reasonably common surgery which would tide him over until we could get him home for specialist surgery. It’s something I need to discuss with DC’s medical team here in more detail but they’ve said they’re not adverse to DC travelling.

Based on that I think you would be absolutely fine if you needed help, anywhere in Spain, where the medical system is very good indeed (like the NHS but with much shorter waiting lists for elective stuff, and super-rapid ambulance response). Majorca has a population of close to a million, so the main hospital sees almost everything. During Covid it imported ICU patients from the mainland at some points.

Calla Millor in Mallorca is about an hour from the capital. It's a busy resort popular with all nationalities with nice beaches. Plenty of 4/5* hotels right on the sea front. Look on Jet2 for a package to give you an idea.