Free Maternaty Care

Hi all,

Last week my partner had pains in her stomach, hadn't felt the baby move in 5 hours was vomiting and had diarrhea, she collapsed in the bathroom and screamed for help, I took her to the local A&E.

Without doing any tests other than listening to the babies heartbeat, the Dr said it was a "gastro bug" and wasnt pregnancy related gave her a maxilon? injection and charged us $75, they sent us home 30 minutes later even though my partner was still very sick she had to rush to the toilet at the drs to vomit some more before we left.

My partner went to our GP the next day to have tests they came back negative to any gastro virus.

I have read vomiting and diarrea was related to lactose during pregnancy? I am a bit pissed off as they didn't seem to look after her very well at all, it seemed like they were in a rush to go home as we turned up 5 minutes before they were due to close.

I thought anything related to pregnancy was free?

Can anyone confirm this?

Edited by FosterCashew

Because the doc put it down to gastro rather than something purely pregnancy related they can charge you regardless of whether it was after hours or whatever.

Renee & Lauren wrote: I think that is only at your local surgery and not after hours / emergency

I had a quick read of this page

http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/section88-maternity-notice-2007-feb07

(3)     urgent out of hours pregnancy care     $60.00

What does non LMC mean?

Urgent care seems to be covered... maybe I'm wrong

Edited by FosterCashew

sorry I should say that I think it is only for local GP's as I never had to go to emergency unless I was referred from my GP so it was free anyway

My understanding is that maternity care is only free up until 14 weeks, that what my GP said and she wouldnt charge me if she didnt have to. She actually apologised that she had to charge me when I saw her for something at 26 weeks that was related to pregnancy.

AH clinic is free if it is pregnancy related and they wouldnt count gastro as pregnancy related. Unless you can prove that it was pregnancy related I doubt you can get your money back.

Thanks all for your input, she is ok now, this pregancy has been pretty rough so far, hopefully it gets better for us.

Its not really a biggie as we have insurance. The reason I asked was my friend had to take his mrs to the same A&E 4 times during the pregancy and wasn't charged once, I'm not sure what it was for though, they have since changed ownership.

MyLilSquishy wrote: also did you take her to an urgent doctors instead of A&E? (just coz ive never heard of an A&E closing lol) where abouts in the country are you? i know that down here in Dunedin i didnt pay for anything during my pregnancy... but then again my only doc/hospital visits were pregnancy related and reffered by my MW. Sorry im not much help and glad she is better now! (also i had no problems during my pregnnacy with lactose/dairy so not sure sorry!)

It was the local A&E it used to be called white cross

I thought all pregnancy-related healthcare was free? I went to our local A&E (Whitecross) when I was about 30 weeks pregnant cause of major cramping pains that I was having (was nothing - just paranoid I guess) and I didn't get charged anything and even got them to write me out a repeat prescription for asthma inhalers while I was there, also at no charge. I've never heard of it only being up to 14 weeks