HEALTH TOURISM CRACKDOWN

GPs forced to check care for EU patients will be paid for by home country

GPS will be told to identify patients from Europe in a major crackdown on health tourism.

From July they will have to check whether patients registering at a surgery have a European Health Insurance Card.

Issued by their home country, the cards entitle them to NHS care on the proviso that their government pays back the costs.

Receptionists will hand a form to all new patients which asks them whether they hold an EHIC not issued in the UK.

If the tick a box saying ‘yes’, they will be asked to show the card and the details will be recorded on a national database.

If patients from the EU go to hospital for an operation or scan, staff will be able to bill their home country for the costs.

Simon Stevens, who is chief executive of the NHS in England, tells the Mail it is time the UK is ‘properly compensated by other countries.’ At least £300million is lost each year through failure to recoup the costs of treating overseas patients.

The NHS is especially bad at identifying EU patients and billing their governments.

A scathing report by MPs last month revealed that the NHS only managed to claw back £49million from European patients in 2014/15. By comparison it paid out a £675million for UK patients who were treated in EU member states.

The new rules depend on EU patients declaring they have an EHIC card.

Patients from the EU who have lost their card – or who were never issued one – can avoid ticking the box and still obtain free hospital treatment. By law, GP appointments and checks are free for all patients regardless of their nationality.

Hospital treatment – on the other hand – is only free for those patients who have been resident in the UK for at least the past six months. But many hospital staff fail to check a patient’s nationality or how long they have been living here.

Many overseas patients leave hospital without ever being identified. The new rules have been written into GP contracts for 2017/18 and, from July, EHIC checks will be mandatory.

They follow a successful pilot in 2015 involving dozens of practices which scrutinised EHIC cards on a voluntary basis. The checks were heavily criticised by leading GPs, who claimed they would create too much work and deter some patients from registering.

Mr Stevens says: ‘The principle is that the National Health Service is here for people who are entitled to its care. We should be properly compensated by other countries or other payers. People who aren’t entitled to care – doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get that care – but taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for it.

‘The principle is clear. What we’ve got to do now is find easy ways that can be put into practice.

‘Traditionally you have been able to get care just because you are here. We’re collecting £200million and it could be up to £500million so that’s why that’s got to be part of the efficiency plan.’

Mr Stevens says 20 hospital trusts are carrying out a pilot scheme in which patients are asked to show passports or other forms of identification at their first outpatient appointment. They include Peterborough and Stamford in Cambridgeshire and Kings College Hospital, South London.

The checks vary between hospitals and departments but some demand to see two forms of ID – a passport and a utility bill or bank statement.

Patients who cannot supply these documents are still treated but warned beforehand that they will also be handed an invoice.

Two years ago the Mail exposed serious flaws in the EHIC system which partly explained why the NHS was losing so much money.

We revealed that European migrants could obtain EHIC cards in the UK – with no checks – which were intended for British citizens.

They could then travel back to their home country or elsewhere in Europe, showing their UK EHIC card whenever they needed healthcare.

This meant the UK was left with a huge bill for their treatment on the assumption that they were a British citizen.

Last month MPs on the Commons public accounts committee warned that the NHS was losing millions a year to health tourism due to a ‘chaotic’ billing system.

Their report also singled out GPs for failing to carry out checks on foreign patients that would alert hospital staff they would need to hand out an invoice. Last month a BBC documentary revealed that a Nigerian woman had racked up a bill of £500,000 after giving birth to quadruplets in Britain.

The mother, known only as Priscilla, arrived in Heathrow having been turned away by the US where she had intended to give birth.

Two of the babies died because they were so premature.

But NHS staff could not turn her away despite the fact she had no means of paying for her care.

‘Losing so much money’