SHOW PASSPORT TO USE THE NHS
Exclusive: Clampdown on £2bn-a-year health tourists
PATIENTS will have to take their passport to hospital as part of a clampdown on health tourism.
For the first time, hospitals are being told to ensure everyone proves they are entitled to free NHS treatment.
Those at outpatients clinics and in A&E will have to fill in forms stating their passport number and expiry date, and say how much time they have spent abroad, if they are to be admitted on to a ward.
The measures are part of a Government drive to stop migrants and tourists abusing the Health Service, which costs up to £2billion a year.
Hospitals have been issued with guidelines from the Department of Health telling them they have a ‘legal obligation’ to ensure they identify anyone not entitled to free treatment.
Trusts which fail to charge so- called health tourists will be hit with financial penalties worth thousands of pounds depending on the costs of their care.
By law, only those who have been living in the UK for at least six months are eligible for hospital treatment on the NHS. But receptionists, doctors and nurses often assume that all patients referred in by a GP are entitled to their procedures on the Health Service and do not bother to ask for documents.
Senior doctors say the system is being widely abused by health tourists flying in every week specifically for free care, with some racking up bills in the hundreds of thousands.
Under the new system, those attending outpatients clinics for their first appointment leading up to an operation or course of treatment will be asked to fill in a twopage form. This tells them to give their
passport number and date of expiry, nationality, address, GP name and NHS number.
Your unique NHS number is allocated to you when you register with a GP practice and is sent to you in writing.
The form also asks patients to state how many months they have spent outside the UK in the past year. This is because expats who spend most of their time living abroad are not entitled to NHS-funded care.
Patients who do not have a passport or have lost it will be able to provide other identification such as a driving licence, bank statement or a utilities bill – and if necessary, send it in at a later date.
It is estimated that around 20 per cent of Britons do not own a passport, including the elderly or others who have never travelled abroad.
Nonetheless the guidance instructs receptionists and other staff not to discriminate and ensure they do not just give forms to patients on the basis of their skin colour or whether they can speak Eng-
‘Funded by the
taxpayers’
lish. Patients who have gone to A&E and need to be admitted on to a hospital ward will also be asked to fill in the forms.
But they will not have to do so before being seen or treated in casualty because this is free for everyone, regardless of whether they have flown in from overseas.
Andrew Bridgen, the former Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, said: ‘This is not the International Health Service, it’s the National Health Service. Non UK nationals seeking medical attention should pay for their treatment.
‘The NHS is funded by UK taxpayers for UK citizens and if any of us went to any of these countries we’d certainly be paying if we needed to be treated.’
Roger Goss, of Patient Concern, said: ‘It’s a worthwhile price to pay to attempt to recover the tens of millions owed by health tourists.
‘If it is successful, the money recouped could be invested in better care for those patients who are entitled to it for free.’
Under the guidelines women who are about to give birth will not have to fill in forms beforehand because maternity care is deemed ‘immediately necessary’ and is free to anyone regardless of whether they can pay. But staff will be encouraged to ask patients for documents once the baby has been born and chase them up with the bill.
From this week, local NHS bodies will have the power to impose financial penalties on hospitals which are failing to claw back money from health tourists.
This would range from £2,000 for a woman who had flown in to give birth, £7,800 for a major hip operation and £1,775 for the removal of a stomach ulcer.
Hospitals are also told to appoint an ‘Overseas Visitors Manager’ – ideally from the finance department – with the job of ensuring foreign patients are charged for treatment, and to install portable chip and pin machines to enable them to charge patients at their bedside.
The measures would bring the NHS more closely in line with the healthcare systems of France, Germany and Scandinavia, which require patients to present an identity card before having treatment.
The Department of Health said the NHS was aiming to reclaim at least £500million a year by 2017/18. It would be up to individual hospitals to decide exactly how to police the rules.
WITH health tourism costing the NHS an unsustainable £2billion a year, the Government’s plan to make patients produce a passport to prove they are eligible for free, non-emergency hospital care is a welcome first step.
Indeed, many will wonder why the same rules are not being applied to overstretched GP surgeries, where illegal immigrants and foreign visitors will still be free to register without proper checks.
However, the hospital bureaucrats must show common sense and remember the aim of the policy: stopping foreign nationals travelling here solely to abuse the system – not turning away British pensioners who can’t find any ID.