Health tourist racks up record £530k bill – and NHS has to pay

THE row over the cost of health tourism was reignited last night after it emerged that one foreign patient has left the NHS with an unpaid bill of £530,000.

The unnamed patient, who arrived from outside the EU, is thought to hold the record for the most expensive bill for a so-called health tourist.

The previous highest was racked up by a Nigerian woman called Priscilla who jetted into Heathrow as she was pregnant with quadruplets.

The 43-year- old later confessed she had no way of paying a £331,000 bill after giving birth at St Mary’s Hospital in West London. It is thought her bill reached £500,000.

The figure comes after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt asked NHS trusts to make sure patients were eligible for free care before commencing treatment – or charge them up front if not.

Critics who say more needs to be done to clamp down on foreign patients turning the NHS into an ‘international health service’ were horrified by the figures.

Tory MP Andrew Percy said: ‘These are shocking examples which again show how the NHS is being taken for a ride by health tourism. At a time when increasing demand is placing NHS staff under huge strain, people expect resources to be spent treating those who live in the UK and are actually entitled to its services.’

James Price, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘This figure is truly astonishing, especially when every pound of it not recovered from the person receiving the treatment will be money that cannot be spent helping people who do pay their taxes.’ The bill – a total of £532,498 – was incurred by the former Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Manchester Royal Infirmary as well as St Mary’s maternity hospital.

It was one of three cases where a foreign patient cost the NHS more than £300,000 in 2016-17, a freedom of information request revealed.

St Bart’s Hospital is chasing a £349,131 bill from one patient while Guy’s and St Thomas’ has been left with an unpaid bill of £317,898. The two London trusts had the largest totals for unpaid bills for treating health tourists in 2016, at £4,987,190 and £2,616,522 respectively.

The new figures show Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals in east London are chasing parents of one-year-old twins who racked up a £157,378 debt. London North West Healthcare NHS Trust is owed £122,632 from an Indian man aged 66 who was treated for a pancreatic condition.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which now runs the Manchester Royal Infirmary and the St Mary’s maternity hospital, refused to reveal where the £532,000 patient came from or what treatment they received.

It comes as the Government hopes to recoup £500 million a year after introducing new measures to stop the scandal of health tourism which costs the NHS up to £2 billion annually. The Department of Health said hospitals must make sure they charge patients who are not eligible for free care.

Health minister Philip Dunne was accused of belittling patients after claiming they could ‘sit on seats’ in A&E if there were no beds. He made the comment after Labour’s Tracy Brabin told him patients had been ‘sleeping on the floor’ in hospital.

WITH the NHS in the depths of a funding crisis, the public will be bewildered by the news that a patient from outside the EU was allowed to rack up a record bill of £530,000 for treatment at a Manchester hospital – which will never be paid.

While British patients – who fund the NHS through their taxes – are told they must wait for life-changing cataract, hip or knee operations due to the shortage of resources, up to £2billion a year is now being spent on treating ‘health tourists’.

Isn’t it time we stopped being such a soft touch? Ours is a National Health Service – not an international one.

If foreigners choose to travel here for treatment, they should pay their bills.