Who are you going to call?

Helplines provided by health insurers are meeting a growing demand from customers, writes FIONA REDDAN

A YOUNG child vomiting uncontrollably can strike fear into the heart of even the most experienced of parents. Calling your local hospital for advice is unlikely to prove helpful, given the level of cutbacks, while a trip there might see you spend many hours waiting to be seen.

A call-out from your 24-hour GP service can cost more than €70, and, while a plethora of private AE facilities promising short waiting times have been set up in recent years, these often have limited opening hours, don’t treat young children, and are expensive.

So, the move by insurers to provide 24/7 on-call medical help is a welcome development for most families, as was the case for Michelle Dunne of Blarney, Co Cork. A trip to Dublin to visit relatives saw her family eating out in an Indian restaurant, but after her five-year-old son Peter ate naan bread, he started vomiting profusely.

Away from home, Dunne was unsure what to do, but knew there was something “abnormal” about her son’s condition, although she was unaware that he was allergic to nuts, which were contained in the Indian bread.

So, she rang the VHI helpline, where a nurse told her to wrap him in a blanket, put him in the car and get him straight to Crumlin Children’s Hospital. By the time they arrived, Peter was going into full anaphylactic shock, but luckily was in the right place.

“The nurse literally saved his life, had we not been in hospital when he went into shock who knows what would have happened?” says Dunne, adding that she doubts she would have recognised the seriousness of Peter’s condition herself.

While Dunne’s experience may not be typical of most calls, the provision of such services is meeting a growing demand. All three major private insurers – the VHI, Quinn and Aviva – now offer helplines in Ireland, while the HSF is planning to launch a service over the coming months.

The helplines, which are staffed by fully qualified nurses, are in operation 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and are open to all scheme members. Quinn-healthcare also offers a GP line, which it launched last year, and which gives direct access to GPs.

Unsurprisingly, they are becoming very popular. According to VHI, its service has handled about half a million calls since its inception in 1999, and last year alone about 80,000 calls were answered, while its pregnancy helpline has had 2,000 registrations since 2007. Quinn says that close to 400 members access both GP and Nurse line on a monthly basis.

Quinn says the top three reasons for calls to its Nurse line are queries regarding paediatrics, gastroenterology, and ENT (ear, nose and throat conditions).

At the VHI, the top health symptoms which customers call about are high temperatures, vomiting, rash, diarrhoea, coughs, abdominal pain, crying children and cold/flu symptoms, while Aviva noticed a significant volume of queries on swine flu.

But what can you expect when you dial the number? Quinn and Aviva’s helpline teams are based in the UK, while VHI has an operation in Navan, Co Meath, which is staffed by about 20 qualified registered nurses and midwives. The nurse listens to the problem, advises on the condition and decides whether or not a GP or hospital visit is required.

With Quinn’s GP line, calls are answered by a trained operator who will take some details and a GP will return your call at a time that suits you.

The VHI also advises its users to call the helpline if they have questions about an illness or treatment, or any tests they may be undergoing. Moreover, if you’re looking for a second opinion, the VHI’s NurseLine will arrange one for you through Best Doctors, which is an international database of 50,000 medical specialists.

And do they prevent an inconvenient dash, or expensive trip, to the local hospital or GP service? According to Quinn, research on its GP line shows that the majority of calls are closed (70 per cent plus) without referral to another medical professional, while the VHI says that just about 8 per cent of its callers were advised to attend a hospital.

As Dunne says of a later incident which saw her 18-month-old daughter Emma swallow a hair slide, she called the VHI helpline first because she, “didn’t want to be rushing into casualty and unnecessarily clogging up the system”.

However, there are some restrictions on their use, with insurers making the point that the services offered are non-emergency helplines, and members should always contact their own GP or the emergency services when faced with an emergency, so as not to delay any treatment.

And, while VHI’s NurseLine offers a pregnancy support service, which allows members the opportunity to register with a qualified midwife, other helplines are not recommended for use by pregnant women, with Quinn advising that mothers-to-be should make a trip to their GP instead.

For insurers, the provision of such helplines has obvious advantages, reducing the number of people availing of GP or expensive hospital services unnecessarily, and thereby reducing the number of claims it has to meet.

They continue to expand their range of associated services.

The VHI, for example, also operates an e-mail service, Ask the Experts, while an Ask the Nurse section allows customers to send their queries to a qualified nurse.

VHI: NurseLine 1850-247724

Quinn-Healthcare

GP line: 1890-907648

Nurse line: 1850-923500

Aviva

Nurse-on-Call: 1850-946644