# Medical treatment in St Lucia- Avoid Tapion Hospital



## donahuj (Aug 28, 2010)

I recently returned from a sailing charter in the Grenadines. On the second to the last day of my charter, I picked up food poisoning and had to go into an emergency room in St Lucia. I made the mistake of choosing to go to Tapion Hospital in Castries, St Lucia. Tapion is a private hospital and the public hospitals in St Lucia and other Caribbean islands will serve non-locals, but since the medical treatment is very inexpensive, the waits tend to be very long (6-8 hours before you are seen). I was told that for a local choice (we happened to be near Castries), Tapion Hospital was better, though more expensive. I ended up waiting about 2 hours before a doctor saw me, though I did get a visit much faster by someone from hospital administration who explained to me that I needed to pay a $600 USD deposit to even be seen by the doctor, and that anything left from that deposit would be returned to me after the visit. He promptly charged my credit card and handed me a receipt for $600. I told him that I just needed a prescription for an antibiotic but he said that I needed to get a prescription for a doctor to get the prescription. He also explained that if I saw the doctor, the minimum fee for the doctor visit was $300 USD and that anything else such as blood tests, prescribed drugs, materials, etc., would be on top of that. I asked what the price was for locals and I was told that a doctor visit for a St Lucia resident was about $115 USD in the emergency room. I asked the doctor about this later when I ended up seeing him and he said to me, "two words: rip off". He explained that tourism is a business in the Caribbean and that the hospitals like to make money off of visitors, but that this was a policy he had nothing to do with personally. In any case, the doctor ended up asking that I have a blood test to confirm that I had a bacterial infection, since he didn't want to prescribe an antibiotic if my infection was viral. Two hours later, the blood test did indeed confirm that my infection was bacterial, so the doctor prescribed an antibiotic and I was on my way. The total cost of my visit was supposed to have been about $330, which included the doctor visit and the blood test, and I was supposed to have immediately received a credit back to my American Express for $270 for the balance of my deposit, but three weeks later, that credit has not shown up. I have called the hospital three times now and, when I am able to get someone on the phone from patient billing, they have told me that it would be put back to my credit card "today". I have concluded that their policy with foreigners is to charge the $600 and just not to refund any of the balance due with the hope that people would just get tired chasing their refunds and give up. I have disputed the balance with American Express so I am sure I will ultimately prevail on this, but it's a real shame that Tapion Hospital has taken this as their standard operating policy for treating foreigners. They will provide treatment, but they do so dishonestly. A few lessons here for sailors who need medical treatment in the Caribbean: 1) DO NOT GO TO TAPION HOSPITAL in Castries, St Lucia, and 2) bring some antibiotic pills so that if you get food poisoning you don't need to go see a doctor to get a prescription, or at least get a prescription from your local doctor before you go.


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## Yorksailor (Oct 11, 2009)

That is why you need travel insurance and repatriation insurance...What would the bill have been if yo uhad been in a car wreak?


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## SailingWebGuy (May 5, 2010)

Not medically related...but I've had bad experiences in both Costa Rica and Panama with car rental agencies. I too got the impression that they dishonestly bill or hold back deposits in hopes that I would give up trying to get my money back. 

However, I once worked for an elevator company that sold maintenance contracts (kinda like insurance for repair work). We had hired a new operations manager whose opinion was to bill customers for repairs even though those repairs were covered by the maintenance contract. When I disagreed and told him that it was not only wrong but ILLEGAL his reponse to me was something along the lines of "I bet 80% of the customers will pay the bills without ever questioning them". He was fired shortly thereafter.

Those experiences have made me very cautious both in other countries as well as my own.


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## seabreeze_97 (Apr 30, 2006)

I wonder what blood test that was? Im not all-knowing, but i do know that it takes 2 days to grow blood cultures, not two hours. Other than a sed rate, crp, and white count, all of which confirm some sort of immune response, but do not identify bacterial infection per se, I wonder what they claim to have done?


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## donahuj (Aug 28, 2010)

They said CTC test, but I likewise am skeptical- I wouldn't be surprised if they were just trying to run up more charges. The doctor was actually sympathetic and said that normally they would have asked to admit me for overnight "observation".


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## seabreeze_97 (Apr 30, 2006)

Circulating Tumor Cell. Sounds like the doc was in on a medical version of good cop, bad cop.


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## eryka (Mar 16, 2006)

What a crappy experience. We scheduled a meeting with our doctor before we left the U.S. and had him write prescriptions for cipro, some heavy-duty pain meds, a epi-pen, and a couple of specific-to-our-medical-history drugs. Protected us against not just weird systems like the one you encountered - but, what if we hadn't felt well when we were out in the middle of nowhere?


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## RichH (Jul 10, 2000)

If this a credit card issue ... report it to your credit card agency and have them make the adjustments, etc. However, most cc companies require that you notify them BEFOREHAND when you travel to the Bahamas and Carrib. ... so widespead is the cc fraud there. 

Secondly, you can go into almost any 'pharmacy', apothecary or 'chemist shop' in the 3rd world, ask for and get just about any 'non-opiate, etc.' drug that you want ... cash on the barrel head.


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## eryka (Mar 16, 2006)

RichH said:


> Secondly, you can go into almost any 'pharmacy', apothecary or 'chemist shop' in the 3rd world, ask for and get just about any 'non-opiate, etc.' drug that you want ... cash on the barrel head.


Indeed! We literally found anti-malarials on the shelf in the drug store in Honduras, next to the booze. (Not to get into politics, but the gov'ts in many of these countries are more vested in having their populations stay well than in protecting the profits of the drug companies and medical industries.) Two caveats - (1) if you need a 'designer' drug instead of the generic, get it in the States before you go. We found the quinine-based generic antimalarial for the equivalent of $7/month; but not the newer malarone necessitated by Dan's medical history. (2) Take appropriate preparedness before going off the beaten path; the clinics on the smaller islands are far from comprehensively stocked.


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## RichH (Jul 10, 2000)

ummmmmm .... without profits you wont have 'newly developed' drugs or new / revolutionary medical procedures, etc. 

Instead, Take away the profit motive for the *unbridled pursuit of contingency fees* and medicines and health care would be a LOT cheaper.


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## donradclife (May 19, 2007)

My wife routinely gets antibiotics and other pharmecuticals without a prescription in the Caribbean. If she has a problem with the big chain pharmacies requiring a prescription on a given island, she simply goes to one of the smaller local pharmacies.


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