1 reviews | Active since Dec 2010
Not fully covering surgery needed after bad home accident
My husband experienced a life altering incident on Monday 5 October. He suffered an accident at home, he fell and landed on his right shoulder rendering his entire right arm completely unusable. He was in excruciating pain, I've never seen my strong husband react to pain in this way. We managed to get him an appointment with orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Basson on Tuesday 6 October. Dr Basson ordered X-rays of the shoulder which were unclear. He then made an appointment for my husband to get a sonar the next day. The sonar revealed that my husband's tendons have torn off his shoulder bone and his muscles have been torn into. Dr. Basson advised that he needed surgery to repair it, as damages to this extent will not heal itself and the future use of my husbands arm depends on the surgery to repair it. He advised that he cannot operate immediately as there is much internal bleeding, the bleeding would need to stop first before they can repair. Surgery has been scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday 14th October, but Medshield is refusing to load it as a PMB. We have to pay a co-paymnet of R4000 for this surgery and they are refusing to cover the internal prosthetic needed to fix the tendon. They are saying: sorry, no broken bones, no PMB!! We are paying R5121 a month for medical aid. We are young and barely ever use it. Now, when an accident has occurred, and we need the surgery to save my husbands arm, they are hitting us with co-payments and non cover of the internal clips needed to fix his arm. He cannot use his arm at all. The entire arm is paralysed in pain. He cannot drive, he cannot type out an email, he can barely eat as he must use his left hand. This accident has rendered him literally at a loss of his right arm, and our medical aid has thrown us to the wolves. Cough up thousands for this hospitalisation, or don't do it, is the ultimatum we are faced with. I wonder what CMS would say about this, or has Medshield not gotten the memo about PMB's.
