The hospitals with no-one to keep tabs on health tourists

HOSPITALS are failing to employ dedicated staff to identify and bill health tourists, despite a major Government crackdown. Some of the busiest hospitals admitted they do not employ a single ‘overseas visitor manager’.

These are staff responsible for checking patients’ identities and chasing invoices – crucial to the new Government rules.

From today, hospitals are legally obliged to identify and charge upfront any foreign patient not eligible for free treatment.

Staff have been told to ask all patients in wards or clinics where they have lived for the past six months. Anyone who says they have not lived in the UK will be sent to see an overseas visitor manager (OVM) who will ask to see passports or proof of address.

But Freedom of Information responses from 17 hospital trusts in London, Birmingham and Manchester raised doubts over the supposed crackdown.

Three in Greater Manchester – Stockport, Wythenshawe, and Tameside and Glossop – said they did not employ a single OVM despite each seeing 2,000 new patients a week.

King’s College Hospital in south London – which sees 7,500 new patients a week – employs only one OVM. The University Hospital of Birmingham also employs only one despite seeing 4,100 new patients weekly.

These trusts tend to be the worst affected by health tourism as they are close to major international airports and have large immigrant populations.

The Pennine Acute Trust, in Greater Manchester, said it had one than The part-time6,000FoI requestsnew patientsOVM were for a week. made more by J Meirion Thomas, a leading cancer surgeon, who has campaigned for tougher regulation on health tourism, which he says is a burden on the taxpayer that ‘runs into billions of pounds’. He said he was ‘shocked and disappointed’ by the Government’s lack of progress and that the system was open to abuse because patients who say they have lived in the UK for six months will not face further questions or identity checks.

Mr Thomas said: ‘This policy is naive and impractical and will fail … Overall, the policy is flawed. It will soon become common knowledge that in the NHS, care is free to anyone who answers “yes” to this single baseline question.’

He added: ‘Throughout the guidance [on the new rules], the pivotal role and the additional training requirement for OVMs is explicitly described.

‘The OVM has the responsibility to teach other staff about the new strategy – which will fail because some hospitals either have no OVMs or an inadequate number to cope with this enormous and complex workload.

‘This explains why Mr Hunt’s upfront charging policy will make little impact on health tourism. How can so few OVMs cope with so much?’

Some trusts did have enough OVMs including the Royal Free in north London, with six, and Imperial College Healthcare in west London, with four. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, of the British Medical Association, said: ‘It is vital patients do not face bureaucratic or financial obstacles that prevent acutely sick and vulnerable individuals seeking necessary treatment.

‘This would be morally unacceptable and could end up costing the NHS more money due to lack of timely treatment.’

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, of the Royal College of GPs, said: We recognise that the NHS must not be abused and measures must be taken to tackle health tourism but it should not be the role of doctors and other health professionals to police this.

‘Whilst charges are not applicable to GP services, we are concerned about the unintended consequences of increased demand on GPs from patients who are unable to get treatment in secondary care.’

‘Bureaucratic obstacles’