Overview
What is a medical emergency?
A medical emergency is the sudden, unexpected onset of a health condition that needs immediate medical or surgical treatment. If a person doesn’t get treatment, his life would be at risk or delaying treatment would result in serious injury or dysfunction of an organ or body part.
Members should contact us within 12 hours of an emergency admission to get the necessary authorisation.
We cover you in hospital for emergency and planned hospital admissions. In an emergency, go straight to hospital but call us or get someone to call us within 12 hours. For planned hospital admissions, please call us 48 hours before you go to hospital to confirm your admission.
The main reasons for an emergency admission is to ensure that a member's airway (breathing) and circulation (blood flow) is not compromised or at risk of becoming compromised. This may be as a result of:
- Trauma with severe blood loss
- Heart attack
- Coma
- Respiratory failure (asthma attack or sever pneumonia)
- Stroke
- Shock (from severe infection or loss of blood or fluid).