Good GRIEF..... 26 Pages and the focus is on how to pay for emergency treatment rather how to receive expedited and effectual treatment! If the dollar is the determinant factor in getting the correct and effectual treatment for DCI, we are screwed.
Folks....what is more important; your stash of bucks and credit line or being permanently disabled or dying? First identify who, where and how your DCI will be treated.
Weakest link is if we do not have a trustworthy, timely and correct treatment means of our DCI....not a quest for the imagined security of a "Don't Leave Home Without It" card.
If today's [or yesterdays?] DAN can't quickly get an injured diver to the best available treatment team and a real diver treatment chamber, not just a burn/gangrene oxygen chamber, then what card or credit line you have is a moot point. DAN: trust them and others with verification. Will their protocols and red tape, delay or stop your treatment? Can we count on them and expect them to expedite and establish the best treatment available? Wish it were true, but other than yourself when you have a DCI nobody has a more vested interest in getting you the correct and rapid treatment than you do. Again, like Dumbo's Feather, wishing will not make it true. DAN is not our caretaker but only a corporation that we trust for honest information and assistance in an emergency. The salient question should be: Can we trust them with our lives in an emergency? Are their procedures and protocols rapid enough and effectual enough; especially when time is critical? Yes, I have DAN membership and insurance; but like many have never scrutinize what services I can count on them for in an emergency. My Bad.
I am in the midst of trying to identify where and who are the qualified Diving Medical Officers/Physicians in the locales that I dive who can examine me or consult with a competent examining doctor conversant with diving medicine to green light me for correct chamber treatment. This includes review of air transport options. Add to that I personally want the locations of 6ATA chambers [see USN Treatment Tables 6A and 4] and not be shunted to a mono 3ATA chamber. Again, just for me, while a mono chamber or a 3ATA chamber operated by a "hyperbaric physician" or even by Diving Medicine Physician may be "enough" it also may not be and I want the best treatment options not the "good enough" ones. Abating symptoms is not the same as preventing permanent damage.
I suspect in todays medical services environment I am engaged in a Fool's Errand; but for me there are no shortcuts to excellence, especially if my welfare is on the line.
Phil
