Netcare Umhlanga Hospital - poor poor service

<p>The word on the street is that you don't use this hospital. Unfortunately we found out the hard way. My wife gave birth at 22:46 one evening. After the birth our boy was rushed to NICU. I was left in limbo while my wife got stitched up and our boy was being treated. As soon as my wife was out of theater I got marched off to pay the excess on a private room. 3 nights upfront, R1600 per night, cc slip shows transaction time 00:16. The next day at 10am the nurses still had not taken my wife through to meet our boy and then the paed decided to transfer our boy to Ethekwini Heart Hospital for a heart scan. Firstly, they wanted to discharge baby and keep mum, but the gynae told them not to separate mum and child and discharge them both. The result is that they separated mum and baby for the ambulance ride by nearly 2 hrs. I followed our boy in his ambulance and made sure he arrived safely at the next hospital. They discharged them without the road to health book and birth reg paperwork. My wife was discharged at 4 pm a total of 16 hrs in her private room and when it came to a refund for the excess on the room I was told they would do me a favour by refunding 1,5 days and not 2. Well if you charge by the day then why only charge us for 3 nights and not 4 days? It's ******* and doesn't make sense that you charge by the night and refund by the day! Well we noticed the difference when we got Ethekwini - great facilities, staff and service. Anyway, a week later my wife's scar was infected badly. When we told people about our experience they said 'well that's Umhlanga hospital for you.' If it wasn't for needing to use specific doctors I wouldn't go back. I hope the powers that be read reports like this and sort things out asap! We pay too much to medical AIDS and private health care to get this kind of service. </p>