Pensioner who feared he’d die waiting for NHS hip has op in Lithuania
‘Claimed back £6,000 cost’
A MAN of 85 travelled 1,500 miles to Lithuania for a hip replacement because he feared he would die before getting it on the NHS.
Doctors told Peter Gaillard there was an 80-week wait to have the surgery at his local hospital.
So, after researching the cost of the operation online, he decided to travel from his home in Gwynedd, North Wales, to Lithuania last year.
He paid £6,000 – around half the cost of going private in the UK – and says the results were ‘extraordinarily good’. And he even managed to claim back the full fee from his local health board after his return home.
‘I saw a specialist (in Wales) and was told there was an 80-week waiting list,’ he said. ‘I did not feel at my age I could hang around for what might have been two years with everything getting worse and I want to make the most out of the rest of my life as I can.
‘After hunting hard I found it was possible to have the operation in Lithuania for £6,000 as opposed to paying £12,000 privately in this country. I thought it through long and hard and decided to book.
‘I didn’t know about the reimbursement. It wasn’t until I was emailing with the nurse at the Lithuanian hospital that she told me she thought it would be possible for me to get my money back. No one here had told me anything about it.’
People in England and Wales can apply to a special panel for drugs or treatments not routinely offered by the NHS if their doctor believes it would significantly improve their condition and they are likely to deteriorate otherwise.
Under European law this includes getting the NHS to pay retrospectively for operations in Europe if the patient is likely to face an ‘undue delay’ otherwise. Whether ‘undue delay’ applies is determined on each individual’s clinical needs, history and prognosis.
Failure to carry out the operation within national waiting target times, however, is not enough. It is unclear exactly how the impact of Brexit could affect such rights after March 29.
Mr Gaillard, who had his right hip replaced by the NHS in 2004, saw a specialist at Bangor Hospital in January 2018, who told him it would probably be June or July of this year before he would be able to have the operation on his left hip.
Instead he travelled to Lithuania in October and was allowed home ten days later. He said: ‘The whole process went very, very well and the results are extraordinarily good.’
Mr Gaillard got in touch with the Individual Patient Funding Request department at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which confirmed he was eligible to claim back the £6,000. He received it three weeks later.
NHS patients are able to apply for reimbursement for operations in Europe retrospectively, but in most cases are urged to seek prior approval from their health or commissioning board.
They must provide documentation, including receipts from the hospital abroad, and the refund is capped to that of the cost of the equivalent operation in the NHS.