Cautionary tale: out of province healthcare

A Cautionary tale on out of province healthcare A Sudbury woman suffers a heart attack while travelling in Canada and gets a big healthcare coverage surprise. Molly Frommer reports.

A woman from the Greater Sudbury area had a heart attack last year while visiting relatives in Nova Scotia and after returning home, she was sent a very large bill.

This week, there was a hearing held to look into the Ontario Health Insurance Plan's refusal to pay the out-of-province air ambulance costs.

Erla Wenborne is looking at a $12,000 bill for emergency air ambulance transportation.

Her husband, Dean, says he won’t be paying the full amount of this bill, and feels he shouldn't have to.

"The ambulance service in Nova Scotia put the bill in the hands of a collections agency, but the collections agency is waiting to hear what happens with these appeals.” said Dean.

The Wenbornes want to raise awareness that OHIP does not cover people's ambulance costs in another province and after many phone calls to insurance companies, they say they can’t find anywhere that will cover those costs.

"If you travel out of province, there's a liability in front of you right away. If you don't have insurance and just try to get insurance, to cover ambulance, you can't get it." said Dean.

"Most insurance companies answered us, no you are covered. If you have an OHIP card you are covered. So, to say that they have the product available when they don't even know what is and what is not covered is just ludicrous.” said Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas.

She says what's happening isn't fair, on many levels.

"It was an emergency. It was medically necessary. They never asked them, ‘is it okay to send you on a $15,000 ride?’ No, most of the time you’re unconscious, you’re being transferred. They make decisions for you." said Gelinas.

A final decision won’t be made in this case for another two or three months.

Gelinas says she'll be bringing this up at Queen’s Park in the coming days.

Which ambulance services are covered by OHIP