Health Insurance Is whole of hospital stay private if we signed half way through stay?

Clamball

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My background is my young adult daughter was hospitalised in May. She has a medical card but she also has private health insurance.

About day 6 of stay doctors confirmed she was out of HDU and back to general ward but treatment would continue for 6 weeks. In the hope that she would be assigned a private room I elected to move her to a private patient for the rest of her stay.

Will her whole stay now be considered private or only from day 6? The reason I ask is Laya have rejected an MRI scan done on day 3 as this hospital MRI unit is not covered under Laya. Obviously we were unaware of this at the time as she was sent for the MRI as a public patient and presumably the MRI company have a contract with the HSE.
 
What does the document you signed say? Did you keep a copy or can you get one?

I'm not sure I understand the nuances of treatments covered/not covered in a hospital where the hospital consultants made the in-house referral/
 
My experience of VHI, is they didn't care, and the hospitals would always try to bill your insurance, even when you were in as a public patient. I had this argument so often with hospital's, I have to assume its deliberate policy. I experienced this before everyone had insurance. I think the hospitals try to bill the most expensive route. VHI didn't seem to care anyway. For example they'd send people out for scans, taxi with nurse etc, even when there was one site.

In one situation we had, came in as public, due to delays, meant extended stay in hospital, only space was in private, so they charged the lot as private. Variations of the same, from hospitals and consultants. Sometimes an appeal to the main consultant helped. Usually it was a wall of bureaucracy and I got nowhere.
 
I do not have a copy of the document my daughter signed. I have never asked for copies of anything we signed in hospitals, like consent forms etc, so that is something to consider. When I gave gone for an X-ray or a scan in Affedia, you don’t even see the form you electronically sign, which I find very off putting.

I have no problem with them charging the lot to Laya, but Laya do not cover this one scan at present and I am wondering if the HSE should cover it as she was a public patient when they requested the scan. If she had been admitted as a private patient they would probably have informed us first that the MRI was not covered.
 
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