Our clients, Mike and Rosanna, have recently moved to Spain and have an inspiring story to share. Both are cancer survivors who decided to transition their treatment from the UK to Spain, where they are now registered to receive ongoing care.
Recently, they sent us an email containing valuable information for our other clients. With Mike’s permission, we felt it would be a great idea to share this publicly, as their insights could benefit others considering a move to Spain.
Below is Mike’s unedited story of their journey to registering for cancer medication in Spain.
As I may have already told you, both my wife and I are cancer survivors who both require regular monitoring and very expensive medication, as well as all the normal old age maladies.
“Due to our medical history and ongoing treatment, private healthcare was impossible to obtain at any realistic level, so we have been forced to use the S1 to access public healthcare as private was an impossible option.
After obtaining our public health cards approximately 6 weeks after applying for them in Estepona, we started our medical journey with several visits to the local Estepona Salud. Initially, we took along a translator as most doctors have almost no knowledge of English we did. However, after some insistence, get further appointments with a much younger doctor with perfect English, making life much simpler ( as a rule, most younger doctors all speak quite good English) as clearly the school curriculum during past 10-15 years educates English in their schooling.
We obtained most of our lower-cost medication prescriptions from the local health centre however, the higher-cost medication for more serious illnesses can only be prescribed after visiting a specialist, in our case, an oncologist in Marbella Hospital.
The biggest issue is from date of arriving into Spain until obtaining a appointment with a specialist through a referral from the local health centre doctor can take 4/5 months, which requires either sufficient stock of drugs brought from the UK or in some cases, a quick trip to the UK to get a prescription from your UK doctor and bring the medication back to Spain, there may be an alternative to pay privately to see a specialist doctor in Spain but the waiting time using this route can be 4-6 weeks and the medication costs prohibitive (in my case my monthly injection costs 600 euros).
I do have a couple of tips to offer to speed up the referral specialist appointment timing.
Once the local healthcare requests an appointment from a hospitall you have to wait for a phone call from the hospital to confirm a date to visit the hospital specialists, in a couple of instances we did not get any phone call for weeks and even after getting a Spanish speaking friend to telephone the hospital appointment office they told us we would get a call as soon as they get an opening, (It never happened ).
I then decided to visit the hospital appointments office in person and was immediately given an appointment there, and then I was given an appointment for a few days later.
Bottom line you if you are in need of an appointment within a few weeks, you have to go to the hospital appointments desk in person physically. In our cases when we visited, they were fully aware of our appointments in their system and issued the appointment right there.
The same applies to the local healthcare centre not waste time in telephoning the health centre (they never answer) and the Digital certificate option is also useless for making appointments. Visit the appointment desk in the healthcare centre, and they will issue a paper form appointment giving the doctor and time at the desk.
I would recommend that on your first visit a non-Spanish speaker always requests an English speaking doctor if available (most centres have at least one)
For Marbella and Mijas hospital non-Spanish visitors, there is a great free translator service available at a desk in the main entrance lobby of the hospital. They walk us through the whole process and are available all day.
We are fortunate that both our oncologists are younger and speak perfect English.
The only other tips we have learnt on the medication side is that, unlike the UK, repeat prescriptions are normally only valid for 3-6 months, dependent on the type of drug (my high-cost cancer medication is only available for 3 months). I have to be monitored with three monthly tests and a visit to the Marbella hospital specialist to renew the prescription.
Another difference from UK Pharmacy prescription drugs system, in Spain, the cycle time for picking up your medication is precise ( you cannot pick up the medication on day 27 if your prescription is for 28 days) It’s not a big deal, but if you have multiple prescribed medications on different renewal cycles, it is a pain!
Lastly, I have to say the public system overall is very different from the UK and does take some time and effort to navigate; however the doctors and specialists have been thorough and being able to actually have a face to face appointment rather than the normal telephone appointment you get from UK GP the Spanish system wins.´´