‘Absolute nightmare’: How this family’s Brisbane trip turned from holiday to hospital horror
Don Achala didn’t expect to be fighting for his mother to get life-saving emergency surgery while she was on holiday in Brisbane.
Originally from Sri Lanka, the Melbourne-based IT worker has lived in Australia for the past six years. His mother, Welgampalage Mary Irene Perera, came to visit him and for an extended stay with her sister.
But about a month into her trip, as Perera was enjoying her time in Queensland, she was suddenly struck with severe stomach pain, and told by a local GP to rush straight to hospital.
Don Achala said his mother could have died without surgery to treat a sudden bowel condition. Credit: Courtney Kruk
Despite requests from the family to have her taken to the Mater Hospital – part of the network of private providers honoured by her insurer HCF – Perera was instead taken by ambulance to the public Princess Alexandra Hospital, where she was admitted.
There, tests confirmed diverticulitis – a condition involving inflammation or infection in the wall of the bowel.
Perera’s prognosis was serious. The infected part of her bowel wall had ruptured, which could be a trigger for its contents seeping into her abdominal cavity and causing life-threatening sepsis.
Achala expected his mother would receive urgent surgery, as initially indicated by emergency doctors.
But HCF demanded evidence she wasn’t suffering a pre-existing condition before approving her insurance claim, which required Perera’s medical history from her GP back in Sri Lanka.
She was instead given a course of antibiotics and discharged on July 28, four days after being admitted.
“We were sent home with more questions than answers,” Achala said. “[We were given] no follow-up plan, no additional tests [and] no scans to confirm if she was actually recovering.”
Two days later, Perera fell ill again. This time, the family took her to Greenslopes Private Hospital, where they were told she could receive care under her insurance policy.
Again an emergency doctor recommended surgery, but this was refused on the grounds her eligibility for cover was still awaiting approval from HCF. Perera was then transferred to the Mater Public Hospital at the family’s request.
At Mater, the crisis continued. Confusion between staff led to Perera waiting more than 20 hours in severe pain to receive surgery. When the approval from HCF finally came through, around 5pm on July 31, they moved her to a ward and began preparing for surgery.
“[But not before] two staff from Mater’s finance team approached me with a bill for $10,000, which had to be paid before she could be assigned a bed,” Achala said.
“I paid it on the spot … at that moment, money was not my concern – I just wanted to save my mother’s life.”
Perera underwent five hours of surgery to treat her perforated bowel on Saturday and is now in recovery, though doctors continued to monitor her closely for leakage and signs of infection.
Since her second readmission, Achala has paid nearly $20,000 out of his own pocket to ensure his mother received hospital treatment, with no guarantee of reimbursement from HCF. While he praised staff at the Mater for their “amazing job”, he is critical of the PA and HCF for their roles in delaying her potentially life-saving treatment.
“[The PA] shouldn’t have discharged someone with this kind of health condition,” he said.
In a statement to this masthead, Princess Alexandra Hospital executive director Dr Jeremy Wellwood acknowledged “the distress of the patient and her family who are managing the complicated reality of working with travel insurers to cover emergent healthcare while visiting from overseas”.
“We provide the best care according to the individual medical condition of the patient regardless of their Medicare status or insurance coverage within the public health system,” he said.
HCF were contacted but declined to comment on the record.
“At this point, I have already spent far more than I should have – money I wouldn’t have had to spend if HCF had acted promptly and completed their verification checks when we first asked,” Achala said.
“The delays have cost us dearly, not just financially, but emotionally and physically too.”
Staying in Brisbane to help his mother with her recovery, Achala looks back on the experience as some of the hardest days of his life.
“It was an absolute nightmare,” he said. “The experience … left me feeling hopeless and dehumanised. We were treated like a burden, not a family in crisis.”
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