Timeline of an Emergency Call

Lippmann: Dive operators have the obligation to ensure that their equipment is well-maintained, that their staff members are well informed, competent and vigilant, and that divers are well matched for the sites they dive. If we don’t receive a sufficiently safe level of service from the dive operators we pay to dive, we should have little hesitation to look elsewhere.

How can the culture of dive safety be promoted?

Lippmann: Incident reporting and analysis provide strong tools on which to base relevant accident-prevention protocols. DAN has a key role to play here, and the diving community is better served if it helps DAN collect information on diving incidents and accidents so they can help guide training strategies and diving practices. Unfortunately, in some places there is a tendency to withhold important information about accidents for fear of legal or commercial repercussions. It would be great if this would change.

Heinerth: As a young diver in Tobermory, Canada, I took a class from a great role model named Dale McKnight. Our class worked hard for days, practiced skills and made plans to go on the deepest dive (and first decompression dive) of our lives. We were on the boat heading to the site when Dale told us that we had done such a great job that he would reward us with an extra 10 feet of depth and five more minutes of bottom time. My colleagues hooted and hollered in excitement, while I felt a deepening anxiety. With my head bowed, I quietly muttered that I did not feel ready and would sit on the boat. I was disappointed and embarrassed. Dale tried unsuccessfully to reel me back into the dive.

After a few minutes, Dale admonished the other divers for permitting him to shift a safe, organized plan into a “trust-me” dive. At first I did not understand what was happening, but I soon recognized that he was patting me on the back. I had passed his test. He taught me an important lesson: A true survivor needs to know when to be willing to turn back and call it a day.

Marroni: We can promote a culture of dive safety by transmitting love for the underwater realm while at the same time clearly explaining that the marvels of the sea do not come cheap but rather require certain basic but strict rules that help us avoid being overwhelmed by the force of natural elements.

We should spread similar messages in every course, before every dive and through every article or documentary related to diving. It is important to avoid indulging the superficial messages about the ease of diving or the misinformed, overly catastrophic “scoops” following dive injuries or fatalities. DAN has been striving to do so over the past 30 years, and I think that the results prove the efficacy of this approach. AD

MEET THE EXPERTS

Jill Heinerth, a pioneering underwater explorer and filmmaker, has dived deeper into caves than any woman in history. To recognize a lifetime devoted to water advocacy, she was awarded the Wyland Icon and Sea Hero of the Year awards. In recognition of lifetime achievement, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society presented Heinerth with the inaugural Medal for Exploration. Her photography and writing have been featured in prominent publications around the world.

John Lippmann is the founder of DAN AsiaPacific (DAN AP), which he established in 1994 to improve the safety of scuba diving within the Asia-Pacific. He was chairman, executive director and director of training for DAN AP for 20 years, the editor of Alert Diver Asia-Pacific for 13 years and is currently chairman and director of research at DAN AP. An internationally recognized dive-safety expert, he has written many books and articles about dive safety. In 2007 Lippmann received an Order of Australia award for services to scuba-diving safety, resuscitation and first aid.

Alessandro Marroni, M.D., is the founder and president of DAN Europe and chairman of International DAN. He is also vice president of the European Committee for Hyperbaric Medicine (ECHM) and a lecturer and professor of hyperbaric medicine at the Universities of Belgrade, Padova, Palermo and Pisa. Marroni is the author of more than 250 scientific papers and publications on underwater and hyperbaric medicine and has been a scuba instructor since 1966.

STEPHEN FRINK

PNEUMONIA IN GERMANY

BY GEORGE LEWBEL

FOR HE PAST FEW YEARS MY WIFE, NANCY, and I have purchased DAN Annual Travel Insurance policies. We both have primary medical insurance that is supposed to provide coverage for medical emergencies overseas.

While we were in Germany visiting friends, Nancy caught pneumonia and was hospitalized. I had to use my credit card to pay for the emergency room that admitted her as an inpatient, and the next day I had to pay an estimated cost for her entire stay.

I called the DAN emergency hotline via Skype the day after she went into the hospital, and DAN’s travel insurance carrier offered to fly a nurse to Munich who could accompany us on a flight home, if necessary. The insurers also offered to arrange and pay for the return flight. Fortunately, the hospital was excellent, and Nancy improved steadily. She was released nine days later, and we returned to California on a commercial flight.

Getting our primary insurance carrier to reimburse us should have been easy. The diagnosis was obvious on the hospital records even though they were in German; the doctor had written a summary of the diagnosis and treatment in English, and I had sent all the records to the insurer along with the claim. But our primary insurance carrier gave me one lame excuse after another about why they weren’t reimbursing us.

The story changed every time I called them. First they needed to wait to get an English translation from someone in-house, then they wanted the hospital to translate the records into English, then they wanted me to translate the hospital records into English, then they wanted nursing notes in English, then they said they needed help converting the bill from euros to U.S. dollars and so forth. That went on for almost three months, and I was getting nowhere. A single “please help” call to Robin Doles, insurance manager at DAN, led to everything being sorted out. She was wonderful. She immediately put me in touch with DAN’s travel insurance carrier, and together we called the primary insurer again. Shortly after that call, the primary insurer finally paid its fair share of our claim for emergency medical services.

Before DAN got involved, the primary insurer had successfully stalled the claim. I was about ready to give up, but the people I spoke to at DAN reassured me that they would work with the primary carrier to get our claim paid. DAN’s Annual Travel Insurance is secondary insurance, so getting our primary insurer to meet its obligations was in DAN’s interest as well as ours.

The difference in the time that it took the two insurers to process the claim was striking, too. Our primary insurer took about three months to reimburse us for its share. By comparison, DAN’s travel insurance program underwriter took only two days to process and approve our claim for the remaining 20 percent of the medical expenses. We received a check from them within a week.

Another lesson we learned from this experience was that having a backup high-limit credit card with a low current balance during an overseas trip may be really helpful. The German hospital told me they did not deal with foreign insurance companies — too much hassle — and they would not even see Nancy in the ER until they had run a charge of 500 euros on our card. I suspect that in less-developed countries, that’s even more likely to be the case. AD

“Our primary insurer took about three months to reimburse us for its share.

By comparison,

DAN’s travel insurance program underwriter took only two days...” SHARE YOUR STORY: Has DAN been there for you? Tell us about it at ThereForMe@dan.org.