Baby dies in childbirth. Parents not allowed to take body home.

[RedToothBrush]

What has the UK become?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-48907130?__twitter_impression=TRUE
NHS fees: 'Couple couldn't take baby's body home'

Charging overseas patients for NHS care in England must be suspended until it is clear it is not harming women, the Royal College of Midwives has said.

A couple whose baby died following an emergency Caesarean were not given the body as they were unable to pay £10,000 in medical fees, one doctor has said.

Joe Rylands said the expansion of charging had caused "disbelief" among many colleagues.

The Department of Health said the charges had raised £1.3bn since 2015.

In 2018, Dr Rylands was working in a maternity hospital when a woman from Western Europe on holiday in the UK came in - she was eight months pregnant and had started bleeding. Obstetricians performed an emergency Caesarean but the baby died.

When she and her partner were recovering on a ward, they were interviewed by an overseas visitors manager, in charge of billing.

Because they did not have a valid European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) they were told they had to pay £10,000 for the care they received - which they could not do.

HerRoyalNotness you misunderstand. I was responding to Summer’s point about another case where a couple holidaying in the US were faced with a massive bill to keep their baby alive in ITU.

tolleshunt No, summer the parents travelled without insurance. Not the baby. Punishing the baby for the mistakes of the parents is wildly unethical.

If you are pregnant then your own health insurance covers anything to do with the pregnancy surely, including premature birth? That's the case with my annual policy (just checked the small print) as it covers you up to 40 weeks,.

If a child is born prematurely, to parents in the same situation, receives intensive care and is eventually deemed well enough to be MedEvaced home but the parents couldn't afford it you wouldn't be saying that the NHS was holding the child to ransom would you? You wouldn't just hand over a child who needed intensive medical care and let the parents take them home best way that they could.

This is such an odd story and the drs recount is worded in a very strange way. There's clearly far more to it than simply the hospital refused to release the body until the medical bill was paid for.

If you are pregnant then your own health insurance covers anything to do with the pregnancy surely, including premature birth?

You would think, but thats not how US healthcare works.

Some parts of america are 'aborting' babies after birth so i'm not surprised.

Eliza
I don't know where you reside - SCOTUS ruled in 2003 that Partial-birth abortion is unlawful and was subsequently upheld again in 2007. Partial-birth abortion is punishable by fines and imprisonment.

You do realize that abortion is being demonized in the USA and that we have multiple states now banning abortion past 6wk gestation, right? I wish you wouldn't spread bullshit extremist conjecture (lies) about the USA - it is a big enough mess without comments like yours.

FFS I had to confirm my "pronouns" and "reproductive organ names" at the OB/GYN a few months back i.e. call my vagina a vagina not a front hole - I was there for pre-conception care. That was a huge blow to my reproductive rights - the right to name my parts without consideration of male feelings - I had to classify myself as non-male in a doctor's office that specializes and ONLY treats females within reproductive years and delivers babies.

Lying about the state of women's reproductive rights is not going to help anyone.

@Tolleshunt sorry about that, I misread.

We discovered our prem baby in the US wasn’t fully covered by our medical insurance even though she was such a small weight she should have been covered. Imagine getting a bill for a few thousand on the first anniversary of their death and having to pay up as insurance denied and not feeling strong enough to fight them

when we had to deal with the overseas department following a visitor's admission due to a badly broken bone they where waiting in the bay when visitor was wheeled onto the ward.

but tbf they where very polite and efficient.

As far as the story goes I don't know what to think - just like with everything else media misrepresents according to aligned biases.

Repatriation appears to be a big issue. Not presenting the deceased baby for parents to grieve/hold (without releasing for transport) is really callous.

The judgement on this thread by some posters is staggering. You don't know where they are from (where in Europe), you don't know why they were in the UK, opinions are like assholes - everybody has one and most of them smell like shit.

I’m so so sorry, HerRoyalNotness.

How utterly, horrendously, callous, on top of an already unbearably heartbreaking situation. That should never have happened to you.

I can totally understand you not wanting to fight it, but really my blood boils for you when I think of how the insurers acted. What a bunch of utter cunts. I don’t know how they sleep at night, frankly. If you don’t have a basic level of humanity/decency, what do you have?

This is shocking if true. I assumed it was because they couldn't afford the costs incurred to take the body home. My aunt's body was repatriated last year and it cost nearly £10k.

Why on earth would someone 8 months pregnant travel without insurance?

It may o it be a drop in the ocean of the NHS budget but that money would pay for a lot.

Hospice care should be provided for by the NHS - it isn't. The CCG's pay for some of the care. It the vast majority is charity.

If you go abroad you get insurance or you don't go.

It's sad but other countries are
Much tougher on this than we are. You can't get treated In The states without insurance. Most other countries don't have the same wrap around care we do.

I'm an ex funeral director, I haven't practiced for a few years but still around the industry if that makes sense.
I surprised at this because you can't do it with an adult.
With an adult legally the NOK have a right to custody of body in a specific legal hierarchy if there is no executors (executors trump everyone) is as follows: the surviving husband or wife;
the children of the deceased and grandchildren in the case of a deceased child;
the mother and father of the deceased;
blood-related brothers and sisters, and niece or nephew in the case of a deceased sibling;
grandparents; and
blood-related uncles and aunts and cousins in the case of a deceased uncle or aunt)

I can't recall for stillbirth as the law is slightly different but I would of thought they are on poor legal footing.

You can't get treated In The states without insurance.

See:

The Emergency Medical and Treatment Labor Act (EMTLA) passed by Congress in 1986 explicitly forbids the denial of care to indigent or uninsured patients based on a lack of ability to pay.

Private facilities can refuse service, Medicare compliant facilities can't. We pay 7.65% out of every paycheck to support FICA.

FICA makes up the following taxes:

6.2 percent Social Security tax;
1.45 percent Medicare tax; and
As of 2013, additional 0.9 percent Medicare surtax for employees earning over $200K

Employer matches 7.65% for a total of 15.3% of every payroll dollar paid into general funds to provide healthcare and welfare for children, elderly, and the financially challenged.

Now, you may get a big bill if you don't have the government insurance cards at the time of service but you will get treated and can sort payment/negotiate/pro-bono requests out on the backside.

To be fair, what happens in the States is neither here nor there when we’re talking about people from Western Europe.

Sorry, that wasn’t directed at stoptheplanet, more at people who keep arguing that many countries do things this way or that way.

Surely it's more likely that there were no proper arrangements in place for proper storage and repatriation. So the only thing the hospital can do is keep the baby. Until suitable arrangements are made

That makes sense. You would think the embassy of the country concerned would be supporting the parents to resolve this issue, as it wouldnt be part of the NHS function.

FWIW I've recently been to see a GP in a European country and had to pay for my consultation before leaving the consulting room, despite having an EHIC.

I've just brushed up on my knowledge around this and still births after 24 weeks have to be registered (so have a birth certificate) therefore I would have thought the same rules as adults apply, therefore they have a legal right to possession of the body.

Certainly if they'd come to me to help with repatriation that's what I would have argued.

@Sickoffamilydrama - I don't think there's any doubt that the body should be released to the parents, but where would it be released to? I really do believe that this will turn out to be the main issue.

As some people have mentioned I doubt the body is being withheld as some sort of leverage to make them pay. There will be more to this and the story has probably been spun

So I learnt this because of DIY funerals the family can collect the body it's not the responsibility of the hospital to ensure something is done with it afterwards it's whomever has the body in their possession.
So some people can and do go to the hospital with an estate car and collect their relative you don't need to be a funeral director or have a suitable storage facility.
If the body isn't claimed by anyone then eventually after all avenues are tried the hospital or council depending on where the person died have to cremate or bury the body.

It says they want to take the body home, which is outside of the UK. So even if they can take the body from the hospital they would need documentation to take it out of the country. Also although anyone can transport a body in a private vehicle, I'm not sure planes and ferries would be happy for bodies to be transported that way. So surely until proper arrangements are made the controlled environment of a hospital morgue is the best place for the baby?

I don't think the full story is being given. Holding people to ransom over a body makes no sense.

It is not clear to me what Dr Rylands means here.

In a case of stillbirth, the baby is laid out in a basket for the parents to take pictures, they are allowed to hold him/her etc - this is seen as an important part of the process.

I do not think they actually walk out of the hospital with the baby though, rather arrangements are made with the undertaker. I am going by what happened with my niece here. Unless things have changed, parents do not walk out of hospital with their dead baby (and many apologies if this reads as insensitive or I am wrong). The body being laid out is for within the hospital.

So there are two questions: did the parents have their baby laid out and get the chance to hold him or her and take photos? If this has not happened, this is indefensible, in my opinion.

The second question is that of releasing the body for repatriation.

In terms of billing, the lack of EHIC surprises me as an issue as I thought as others have said, it would be a paperwork issue. My DD has been treated in a Western European country when she was two - they wanted to see her passport and there were some forms. I do travel with EHICs for all of us, but this experience might have led me to believe it was not strictly necessary.

one issue might be that the ehic covers primary care only.
I'm not entirely sure but bereavement services might be outside of that.
very very sad situation for all around.

But effectively by not providing the documents they are holding the body to ransom.

Although you can collect a body without the doctors papers (that are then used to go to the registrar and get a death certificate) usually hospitals will try and have everything ready at once but sometimes thats not possible then especially if they are local to the funeral director the body can and does get collect prior to all the paperwork being completed.

I've heard of some bad things over the years so i suspect that this story is true but the hospital employee didn't have a clue about the legalities of what they did.