High Medical Bills @ NICU

[candy_floss]

Dear mums/dads who have preemies from TMC,

My baby is currently staying in nicu at Thomson Medical Centre. He was born @36 weeks, so when I have signs of labour I did not proceed to KKH for help but went back to my regular gynae stationed at TMC, thinking that at 36 weeks he should be ok. Unfortunately, his lungs wasn't matured at the time when I gave birth and have to be warded. He breathe too hard when he was born and his right lungs suffered from pneumothorax (air leak) and he does not have sufficient surfactant. I had 2 steroid jabs 24 hours before delivery, but was not able to help him much.

His stay in nicu for the past 5 days already reached 16K, which only about 2k can be paid via medisave. The cash portion is overwhelming and we do not know how much more cash we need to fork out. Doctors are still not able to estimate when will he be ok to be discharged back home, because it still depends on how well he respond to the treatments. Tdy is exactly one week since his stay, but the bills are piling up extensively. The pd tried calling the diff hospitals to transfer him ( NUH, KK) but none have vacancies at all

Anyone have similar experience of not able to transfer but manage to come up with solutions ? Will approaching the MP help ?

Thank you for reading.

 

[joy_meme]

no info to share with u, i guess u can try callin urself too.. n mayb can try other major govt hospital like sgh. i wish ur baby will respond 2é treatments well n go home very soon!!

 

[Twinkle Star]

I did but not in sg, I delivered in jb private hospital when I was 30 weeks plus pregnant. He stayed about 7 days in private hospital, cost us 50k ringgit before there's a vacancy in public hospital. We wanted to transfer him when he's about 4 days old but there was no vacancy so pd helped us to call daily to check. He had an emergency operation on day 6 due to perforated NEC and other than that, he has immature lungs, virus infection on birth and during stay, minor brain bleeding, jaundice, going for another operation soon due to second episode of NEC and another operation waiting in queue for hernia. He has been in hospital for more than 2 months since birth, he took off his breathing aid a couple of weeks or 3 weeks ago.

We were lucky that the pd is very helpful to assist us, calling the hospital and talking to the pd in public hospital to keep a lookout giving us the priority first. Of course the surgeon helped too so perhaps that's why we got a vacancy that fast, couldn't imagine how much cash we have to fork out if he stay longer. The financial dept called every alternate day asking us to go over to pay the bill and we had to come up with cash every time they called. We cleared all each time we went over but it accumulated a lot daily, around 5k each day due to the equipments and medications he using/taking.

 

[blizzbless]

Hi. My boy is born at 36 weeks at TMC NICU too.. He need to have a small surgery to let the air out too on his right side.. In total he stay for 10 days. He was born at 1950g. I remember after medisave, we still need to fork out about 10k. If u need more info can Pm me