10-31-2010
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Junior Member
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 11
Rep Power: 0
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Medical treatment in St Lucia- Avoid Tapion Hospital
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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