Dive insurance and recompression chambers, as DAN describes them.

Why this page describes DAN

DAN is the body whose descriptions of insurance and chamber networks our research covered, so this page explains cover in the categories DAN uses. That is not a recommendation of DAN or of any insurer. It gives no prices, premiums or benefit limits, and it is not advice on choosing a policy.

Membership is not insurance: DAN's distinction

A DAN blog post by Anthony Ostrowski and Jeff Wilkins (25 September 2024) describes DAN's US membership and its dive accident insurance as two separate products that complement each other. Its central point is that membership alone does not pay for a dive accident.

DAN says membership is required before buying its dive accident insurance, and that the insurance is underwritten for residents of the US states and the District of Columbia. A search summary of DAN's insurance page also mentions Canada; we could not confirm that. The same 2024 post states that ordinary health insurance plans often exclude diving-related incidents, which is why DAN describes dive accident insurance as a safety net.

The categories of cover DAN Europe lists

DAN Europe is a separate organisation with its own plans. On an undated insurance page, it describes its dive accident insurance as including:

• a 24-hour alarm centre staffed with diving and hyperbaric medicine specialists;
• emergency treatment worldwide, including hyperbaric therapy and time in hospital;
• emergency medical evacuation, including air ambulance;
• cover for death or permanent disability.

On the same undated page, DAN Europe states that two of its sport plans set no depth limit and no restriction on gas mixtures or rebreathers. For technical dives it recommends a limit of 130 m, beyond which cover for an individual dive may be available if a full dive profile is submitted. Applicants aged 75 or over must provide a medical certificate covering fitness to dive, current health and medications, and the plans on offer vary by country.

When insurance is a condition of diving

Insurance can also be a local requirement. PADI's article on diving restrictions (27 February 2024) notes that some places impose their own rules on depth, equipment or insurance, and that these must be followed.

Recompression chambers and DAN's network

DAN states that suspected decompression illness needs prompt medical evaluation and is treated in a hyperbaric, or recompression, chamber; see decompression sickness and barotrauma.

A DAN Alert Diver article by Francois Burman (19 March 2023) describes the DAN Recompression Chamber Network (RCN) as a database of hyperbaric chambers that can and will treat injured divers. DAN's diving medicine doctors and hotline staff use it to contact facilities. DAN says:

• being listed involves no financial arrangement and no exclusivity;
• it shares the data with its affiliates in Europe, Southern Africa and Japan;
• its records cover each chamber's location, whether it is in a hospital, when it is available (around the clock, office hours or on call only), medical supervision, treatment protocols, equipment, maintenance, staff training and willingness to work with DAN;
• where information is thin, DAN assesses chambers on site.

Burman also describes DAN's Recompression Chamber Assistance Program (RCAP), which gives chambers in essential and often remote places technical and operational advice, safety assessments and training. DAN says such chambers often depend on diving patients for their income.

Why DAN does not publish chamber availability

In a page dated 2 September 2020, DAN explains that it does not publish which chambers are available. Chamber status changes often, for maintenance, staff holidays or the daytime patient load, and most chambers do not routinely report it to DAN. DAN says most chambers keep daytime hours and are not staffed in the evening or at weekends.

The same page warns that some divers have driven past medical facilities to reach a chamber, assuming a chamber is the answer to any diving injury. DAN's stated position is that a diver with a suspected diving injury needs medical evaluation at a hospital or emergency clinic, and that the best choice is always the best medical service available locally. Decisions about treatment belong to doctors.

An undated SDI blog adds that some chambers are closing for lack of funding or patients, and that others have dropped round-the-clock availability because qualified staff are hard to keep on call at all hours.