Ill in New Zealand: What I Learned About National Healthcare.

“We need to fly you to Christchurch this afternoon,” the doctor on the phone said.

“Take some time to pack a bag and then come to the ED,” he continued.

“The plane is on its way.”

I was stunned. And felt fine…more than fine. I had done a 45-minute HIIT workout the day before. Plus, I was in the middle of making waffles for my kids.

How dare anything interfere with waffles.

I couldn’t reconcile my (apparent) fitness and need for breakfast pastry with having a serious medical problem. I numbly packed some necessities and reported to the emergency department. There I was tethered to a 12-lead ECG, secured with a five-point harness, and transferred by ambulance (a Mercedes!) to the airfield. Within an hour of take off, I was admitted to the sprawling Christchurch public hospital.

I was ill in New Zealand. What I learned about national healthcare may surprise you.

This was NOT the deal I signed up for.

I must have missed something in the fine print. My husband is the one immersed in the hospital system. He’s the one handling the perspective on nationalized healthcare. (Read some of his impressions here.) None of our family agreed to become intimately acquainted with the patient aspect. At least not beyond the occasional visit to a general practitioner.

But here I was, being flown over the Southern Alps (gorgeous views, BTW…) and feeling ridiculous about it. Surely this is overkill?

I was strapped to a gurney, a monitor recording my every breath and heartbeat, attended to by a personal crew of five. I took a video of takeoff but stopped short of requesting a selfie with the crew. I already felt over-entitled, a perfectly healthy woman occupying a space meant for the critically ill.

Then again.

It is a national health system; not a profit generator. They weren’t going to waste money.

I may have had this all wrong.

Paper Panties, Myth or Reality?

It was confusing though. Were sick people allowed to bring pretty hand luggage and wear their own clothes for a flight? I didn’t have to put on paper panties, either. Although wearing them may have driven home the seriousness of the situation. In an effort to lighten the situation, I informed my husband on our drive to hospital*:

“No way in hell am I wearing the paper panties!”

“You won’t have to wear paper panties, Heidi.”

Now, despite putting my foot down, I was really confused. Because according to my husband, everyone who presents to ED gets a pair of paper panties. Even the colonoscopy patients (think about that for a moment…). He made it sound like paper panties are passed out in a New Zealand ED like candy on Halloween.

But I didn’t get the notorious paper panties. No one ever offered them. Maybe Chuck warned the staff, Don’t even think about giving her paper panties, she’ll…get her undies in a wad. I don’t know. But I never saw a single pair of paper panties the whole entire time I was in hospital.

I’m starting to think paper panties are something my husband just made up, to make posts about hospital more interesting. (Again, you gotta read my husband’s blog to learn more, it’s hysterical.)

So that’s the first thing I learned about going to hospital in New Zealand: paper panties are the lochness monster of the healthcare system. Do they, or do they not, exist?

Great facilities

Let’s be honest: we’re spoiled in the U.S. because our hospitals look like Embassy Suites. Now, when I was wheeled into Christchurch Hospital in the late afternoon, hallways were dim and quiet and empty of staff. A little eerie and grim. I texted my son:

Hey, at least the hospital here is nicer than the one in The Last of Us…

which was more a joke than a jab at what was the older part of the hospital. There was no carpet and no fancy artwork, which makes perfect sense for a facility that cares for sick people. Both adornments are like preschoolers…germ generators that aren’t easy to keep clean.

The scarcity of plush decor doesn’t mean the hospitals in New Zealand aren’t well-maintained. One day I returned from a short walk and was immediately asked by a nurse:

Did you feel that?!?

“That” was a 4.4 earthquake. The building sways with the shakes and shimmies due to pricey retrofitting. It can’t be said the New Zealand National Health System doesn’t invest in its physical plants. It just has to make priorities. Facilities may not feel like a mid-to-upper price range hotel, but they are certainly not crumbling eastern-bloc-style highrises, either.

Private New Zealand hospitals, however, have a bit more “flash.” My changing room at nearby St. George’s (where I had my MRI) offers a glimpse of that.

Cattle stalls they are not.

Full disclosure: when I was brought to my hospital room, I was a bit surprised:

There were other patients in my room.

Then I remembered where I was. In the U.S., every patient gets a private hospital room, thanks to HIPAA. But this was not so in Christchurch Hospital. Not only were there beds for five other patients in my room, but the room was also coed. (However only briefly.)

Of course, there were curtains to give as much visual privacy as possible, but one could be as up in a fellow patient’s medical business as one wanted…you could hear everything. However, it was made clear that if you wished to speak in private to your care team, that would be arranged and honored.

Coincidentally, there happened to be another American in the ward at the same time I was. He likened the room situation to being placed in “cattle stalls.”

Now maybe he would have been happy to have his own private room. But me? I was in hospital for a full week, three hours away from my family, and it would have been darn lonely between their visits. Even though we mostly chatted about our respective health situations, it was good for morale to have a few roomies.

Plus I wouldn’t have learned that in order to get ice cream with lunch, you had to ask for it.

I wouldn’t have found out that patients could have their own dogs visit them on the floor.

I also wouldn’t have been reminded that I was one of the youngest people on the floor. Other patients asked me for help with their mobiles. Not quite the reminder I wanted, but I surprised myself…and my kids…when I could be helpful in the cell phone department.

Just having a puppy in the room boosted everyone’s mood.

No preauthorization for services

My care plan included bloodwork, an ECHO and chest x-rays, several days of round-the-clock heart monitoring (telemetry), and a highly specialized type of MRI (described as “elite” by one of my physicians). All of this plus a full week’s stay in hospital that ended with a surgical procedure.

My care team called all the shots. No off-site paper-pushers got to decide what my care should be, what would or wouldn’t be paid for. I didn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of hospital because my insurance company wouldn’t pay for any additional days. I wasn’t stuck in a holding pattern awaiting word from my insurer whether they would pay for tests and procedures deemed necessary by my physicians.

No worries, as people here say, except that I had an urgent health problem. Which was plenty in and of itself to worry about.

My bed was at the end on the left. I was grateful to have a “window seat.”

Excellent care, at every level

Myth: In a national health care system, health care is substandard. It’s free and you get what you pay for.

I’m not going to pretend to understand all the ins and outs of New Zealand’s health system. But what I do know is it is not free (it is funded through taxes) and it is not substandard.

There are no “death squads” determining who lives and who dies.

There is, however, a sound method of triage. If you have a life-threatening illness. You get care and you receive it quickly. My case was an example of that. Within hours of the specialists in Christchurch (over the mountains and on the other side of the country) receiving my ECG, I was admitted to the hospital there.

My care at every level, whether at my local hospital or in the city, was stellar. Everyone had their role and performed it well:

The aide who was to-a-fault prompt in opening the curtains every morning, and gave us daily weather reports.

My nurses who patiently tracked me down for vitals (called “observations” or “obs” in New Zealand) because I was usually pacing the halls or enjoying the outdoor courtyard (I didn’t sit still well).

My floor docs and residents (known as RMO’s in NZ), who patiently answered all our questions, and explained everything fully and articulately.

And the specialist who performed my procedure was educated at Dartmouth, Stanford and The Cleveland Clinic. I felt smarter just being in the same room. Plus he was one of the kindest, most patient and unhurried doctors I’ve ever met. This speaks volumes when my procedure was late in the day, and the one previous to mine was unexpectedly challenging (remember, no HIPAA).

I don’t think I could have received better care anywhere else.

I was allowed to go off-ward as long as someone went with me. And leaving the floor usually meant going for coffee and a treat at one of the little cafes on the hospital grounds.

When will the other shoe drop?

There are copays for office visits in New Zealand. So it would make sense that there are bills for a pricey hospital stay. In the United States, bills for healthcare are expected. As an American I’m ingrained to be on edge, waiting to receive steep bills for months and months after receiving medical services.

But we are not in the U.S. We are in a country with a very different system of healthcare reimbursement.

The burning question is Will those bills come?

And if so, when?

These questions weren’t at the top of my list while I was in hospital, for obvious reasons. My husband says he isn’t even sure if there is a billing mechanism for hospital stays, etc. And he works for the system.

But we do know this. We are beyond grateful for the prompt, thorough and top-notch care I received in New Zealand. I’m now home and recuperating, adjusting to a new normal. I will have regular follow-up appointments at our local hospital and can even phone my doctor in Christchurch if I need to. He gave me his personal number, just in case.

I could not feel better cared for, or more supported.

And I can’t thank my extensive team enough.

They literally (no drama here) saved my life.

*As in Britain, people in New Zealand go to hospital, not the hospital. (Grammarly is about to explode right now from the lack of “the” in this post.) We Yankees like to freak out about this, perhaps more so than about paper panties. Let’s remind ourselves that we don’t say go to the school, which they do say in Spanish (va a la escuela). Everybody has their way.