Get Emergency Medical Assistance with Your Travel Insurance

Travel Support services are an integral part of Generali’s travel protection plans, providing 24/7 help for a wide range of travel emergencies. But where it really shines is when you need assistance in a medical emergency.

In those critical situations, assistance from our Travel Support specialists can:

• Connect travelers to medical resources
• Help find treatment facilities
• Help them navigate through often confusing international medical systems
• Help them use their travel medical insurance
• Help them return home

These are all important services, so let’s look at them in more detail:

One of the biggest problems many travelers face when they have a medical emergency is they don’t know where to start to get medical treatment. They don’t know where doctors or hospitals are, or how to actually access care.

Generali’s assistance team has years of experience dealing with medical providers in every corner of the world. They have phone numbers, email addresses, and emergency contacts, so together you can take that first step of getting connected to care promptly and confidently.

Meet our team of in-house medical experts

Sometimes the ask is even more basic: Where is the nearest medical facility? You could look up that answer on Google Maps, and the answer may be satisfactory … but the care may not be.

The simplest question may actually require a more nuanced answer, the sort of answer only a trained travel assistance specialist can provide.

Generali’s team of assistance professionals goes beyond the map to find you the nearest best care, staffed by English speakers, with the skills to address your medical emergency.

Also read: 
• Need to Go to the Hospital on a Trip Abroad? Here's What to Do
• How Travel Insurance Works if a Family Member is Hospitalized

The American medical system might be confusing at times, but at least Americans have familiarity with it. They know what in-network and out-of-network means, and they understand the basic concepts of deductibles, copays, and coinsurance.

However, how many American travelers understand how they can access care, get treatment, and pay for care in another country with a system that might be entirely different from what they know?

This can be especially difficult to navigate in a country when everyone but them has medical care provided for them at little or no cost. The assumption might be that if it’s free for that country’s citizens it’s free for me, too – and that assumption would be wrong.

In fact, an American traveler with a medical emergency might have to pay up front before receiving any medical care in many countries.

Not only does Generali’s travel assistance team understand the inner workings of most countries’ medical systems, they speak the language – and by that we don’t just mean French or Italian. We mean that Generali’s assistance experts know what’s important and what needs to be done to cut the red tape and connect a patient to immediate care.

Unless you have a working knowledge of the medical systems of every country you might encounter in your travels, travel protection can be worth what you pay for this service alone.

Also read: 10 Tips for Traveling With Medication

Though we always encourage travelers to read their travel insurance policy, we get it, it can be confusing. So when something awful happens and you’re confronting a medical emergency, are you going to know how to use your medical travel insurance?

Fortunately, the travel assistance experts at Generali know how to put your Medical and Dental coverage in your travel insurance plan, to work. They know what it covers and doesn’t cover, and how it might work with your standard medical plan. They know the limits, and what to do if you start to approach those limits.

Travel medical insurance really isn’t much good in a travel medical emergency unless it’s put to use. Generali’s travel assistance team can work in consort with the claims and medical teams to get money where it needs to go, jump-start the claims process, and help ensure bills get paid, up to the policy maximum.

Also read: The 6 Top Travel Emergencies and How To Deal With Them

Unfortunately, some medical emergencies require a trip to be interrupted and a patient to be flown to a more appropriate medical facility or back to the United States for treatment.

Medical transport can be a complex issue, involving finding the appropriate transportation, finding space at a stateside hospital, coordinating transport to and from planes, securing transportation for traveling companions, making sure luggage isn’t forgotten, and much more.

You as the patient or the traveling companion simply are not going to be able to handle all this by yourself, in addition to dealing with the trauma of a medical emergency.

Also read: Medical Evacuation and Repatriation: How Travel Insurance Can Help

Travel assistance is invaluable in these situations, making sure the patient is comfortable and everything goes off without a hitch. Maybe you think of travel assistance as simply an addition to your travel insurance plan. As you can see, it’s much more than that.

Here’s hoping you never have to use it, but if you do, we’re here for you.

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