"Lack of care from administration staff"

Recently, me and my sibling went to the hospital because my sibling was having a fever and fell over and hit their head and needed stitches. After a Triage with the nurse that didn’t ask us if my sibling had health insurance/ Medicare card we went to see a member of the administration staff.

The staff member was very slow and not clear with their questions and information, they told us that we should pay for all the services we were being provided at the hospital as my sibling didn’t have any insurance/Medicare, which is fine for us and we understand how things work.

The problem was that we asked the staff member several pieces of information about the process and they wouldn’t answer or be helpful with us, I feel that this staff member was treating us as animals and saying: you can’t be in Australia without insurance, that’s how the system works here.

When asked to clarify how much or an estimated cost of the triage or service provided at the hospital the staff member just gave us a piece of paper with a list of values that were not clear for us, where we were or how much it would cost. We kept on asking please can you be clear with us and the staff member wouldn’t respond back.

At the end, a very respectful nurse came to see us and clarified the situation also giving us phone numbers to call as an option to get some help. 

It is unbelievable how a person like that staff member, without any sense of human love or care, can work at a hospital or even do any customer service or person related job. It’s not about money, it’s about caring about people and trying to clarify and giving the others chance of being in a position of choice or understanding of the situation they’re in. It’s not easy for anyone to be in a hospital so please make sure you provide the staff proper training/ understanding on how to deal with situations like that on a daily basis.