Simply sent home

Doctors “prescribed” CT, but hospital device was taboo

Despite a delicate medical history, a hospital in Lower Austria referred a patient with acute pain to external diagnostic centers in writing. Although it was midnight - the machine was presumably free. The pensioner from the Weinviertel region was examined, but despite a history including emergency surgery after a ruptured gall bladder, he was told that "a team from Vienna would have to come first" for more detailed tests.

The gall bladder burst, the abdomen already heavily poisoned: Karl Sch. still remembers the emergency operation when he narrowly missed death from blood poisoning almost five years ago. After being turned away three times by the ambulance at Mistelbach Regional Hospital, an emergency operation saved his life.

Reunion in the operating theater hospital - care ok, but CT was taboo
The 77-year-old was brought back to the hospital at midnight with acute, severe abdominal pain - and was only fobbed off with painkillers. The Weinviertel resident was furious about his discharge report, which explicitly stated that more precise diagnoses were necessary - such as a CT scan.

Patient Karl Sch. after the hospital - he doesn't want or need to comment verbally on the seven failed infusion stitches(Bild: zVg)

"A CT scan would certainly have been done in a short time at night in the well-equipped specialist hospital," the man says angrily. "It's well known that there are enormous waiting times in the Weinviertel region in private practice - but I was refused a check-up at the hospital," Sch. continues.

LGA: No imminent danger, blood tested
The state health agency LGA commented calmly on the case: Laboratory findings had not revealed any danger. Medical decisions would then have been made by doctors who are specialists - this is how standard phrases are used to get around a problem that is currently the subject of intense discussion: there are too few private practice institutes with a health insurance contract in the Weinviertel region, and waiting times are several weeks, as SPÖ National Councillor Melanie Erasim addressed in a parliamentary question.

Hospitals that have been cut to the bone are transferring pain patients to private practices in the middle of the night: a declaration of bankruptcy by the Lower Austrian healthcare system!

Weinviertler SPÖ-Nationalrätin Melanie Erasim

The incident also confirms statements made by Bernhard Wurzer, General Director of the health insurance fund: there has been no increase in the utilization of hospital tomographs, while the number of checks in radiology practices is constantly rising. Nevertheless, hospitals are also referring patients with pain to institutes with extremely long waiting times.