A woman booked herself into a German hospital for surgery after Worthing Hospital told her there were no beds free.
Tanja Flint, who needed an operation for an infection which developed after a miscarriage, got on a plane and had the operation in Germany the next day.
Ms Flint, 28, from Rustington, now hopes to claim back the money she paid from the NHS.
She says she panicked when doctors at Worthing told her they didn't know when they would be able to treat her womb infection, which developed two weeks after she lost her baby.
So she booked herself and her three-year-old daughter on a flight to Berlin, where she checked in to the Ambulantes Operationszentrum.
She was seen the same evening by a doctor and the next day, Friday, had the operation.
She is expecting a £360 bill, which she hopes to claim back from the NHS.
She said: "The doctor said if I had left this any longer it would have been too infected to have the operation."
A spokeswoman for Worthing Hospital said it was not hospital policy to comment on cases.
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