Hunt for health tourist who owes NHS £623k
A HOSPITAL is chasing £ 623,000 from a foreign patient who left Britain without paying their bill for treatment.
Citing data protection laws, managers refused to disclose the nationality of the patient or the nature of the care they were given.
The sum, which is owed to Mid Essex Hospitals trust, is believed to be the highest single debt accrued by a health tourist.
Five other foreign nationals left without paying six-figure bills to hospitals in 2017/18, according to figures obtained by The Sun.
The Government has repeatedly promised tough action on health tourism but many NHS staff are reluctant to charge overseas patients upfront.
Yesterday the Royal College of Midwives called on ministers to drop the fees with some members claiming they were complicit in ‘racial profiling’.
The British Medical Association has been lobbying the Government to abandon the charges since June, saying they are racist and a ‘drop in the ocean’.
Mid Essex Hospitals, which runs three hospitals in Braintree, Maldon and Chelmsford, reported a deficit of around £55million last year. The £623,000 bill could have paid for 3,000 cataract operations, 70 hip replacements and 170 rounds of IVF – all of which are rationed by the health service.
Joyce Robins, of the Patient Concern campaign group, said: ‘This is big money and we can scarcely afford the NHS as it is without paying for all these people too.
‘I can’t believe there is not a better way of running the system so these bills are not left unpaid.’
Last month the Mail revealed hospitals were collectively chasing £150million in unpaid bills from overseas patients with one trust being owed £28million. Only those who are classed as ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK, which usually means living here for at least six months and paying taxes, are entitled to free hospital care.
Everyone else should be charged for all hospital procedures including scans, drugs and an overnight stay on a ward.
Separate figures last year revealed that one anonymous foreign patient had left Central Manchester Hospitals with an unpaid bill of £530,000.
Many of the highest bills are incurred by maternity patients, particularly those who give birth to twins or triplets and require extensive care afterwards.
A BBC documentary in 2018 revealed that a Nigerian left Imperial College Healthcare in west London with a bill of half a million pounds after giving birth to quadruplets. The 43-year- old, known only as Priscilla, had intended to have the babies in the United States but had been turned away at the border.
Gill Walton, of the Royal College of Midwives, said: ‘We believe that maternity care should be exempt from NHS charging altogether to protect and promote maternal and newborn health.
‘This is why the RCM is calling for the charging regime to be suspended until the Government can prove this policy is not doing any harm and jeopardising our shared ambition to make England the safest place in the world to have a baby.’
Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital in central London is chasing a bill of £ 428,000 from an overseas patient, while Barts health trust in east London is owed £286,128 by one individual.
Tom Abell, deputy chief executive of Mid Essex Hospitals, said: ‘The NHS has a duty to provide immediately necessary and urgent care to any patient who needs it.
‘We always work extremely hard to recover all costs from patients who are not eligible for free care, but despite our very best efforts that is not always possible. In this particular case we tried to recover payment for several years.’
‘We can scarcely afford this’