NHS bosses ‘covering up’ tourist costs
Managers say they turn blind eye
THE ‘ vast’ scale of health tourism in the NHS is being covered up by hospital bosses, whistleblowers have told the Mail.
Managers say they are told to disguise the true number abusing the health service by bosses who ‘don’t want to know’ – and are branded racist if they speak out.
Foreign patients can use NHS-issued cards to obtain treatment abroad, funded by UK taxpayers, the Mail revealed yesterday.
But it emerged last night that the Government has known about ‘concerns’ over EHIC card fraud for months – yet failed to act and still issues more than five million a year.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was warned 18 months ago about a loophole allowing foreign nationals to charge the NHS for medical treatment in their home countries. A report published in October 2013 warned that migrants were using EHIC cards after applying for them under false pretences.
The health tourism report revealed NHS staff tasked with rooting out abuse were warning about the ‘system and application process’ being misused by foreign nationals.
It said: ‘Several … commented that visitors from EEA countries sometimes present a UK EHIC card and they were concerned that … people would then return home and access healthcare which they previously would not be eligible for with the cost being met by the UK taxpayer.’
Shadow health minister Andrew Gwynne said: ‘Ministers need to come clean about when they were first aware of this problem, and how widespread it is.
‘Any evidence of people abusing the NHS must be tackled and taken seriously. There cann be no room for complacency.’
Today, overseas visitor offic-ers – managers charged withh cracking down on health tourism – reveal they are being ‘treated as a nuisance’.
Six bravely agreed to bee interviewed – despite fearing they could lose their jobs. They told how:
Some foreign ki dney patients have used NHS dialysis machines for more than five years without paying – at a cost of £200,000 each.
A woman from West Africa also flew to the UK five times to have each of her babies on an NHS ward before staff realised she was a health tourist.
British patients are missing out on life- saving organ transplants because health tourists are coming here to get them.
Bosses would rather ‘turn a blind eye’ to health tourism as retrieving money owed is ‘too difficult’.
Some doctors are complicit, flying in foreign relatives to have expensive operations for free on the NHS.
One whistleblower said: ‘If we declare them to be health tourists, we can’t claim the full amount from the Government for their treatment.
‘ Vast numbers of people abusing the NHS are never identified because of this.’ Another officer working in a different part of England said hospital bosses ignored health tourists to avoid legal battles.
‘Bosses are so frightened of litigation that … they say, “Don’t bother with that one.”’
Two of the whistleblowers said they were branded ‘racist’ for raising concerns. One said she was bullied by a consultant who wanted his father from overseas to have an operation.
The exact cost of health tourism to the NHS is unknown. The Government says it is
‘Ministers must come clean’
‘Tough measures’
about £200million, but senior doctors say it is far higher.
The UK’s system sees foreign patients treated before hospital staff try to claw back costs. In France and Germany, patients pay in advance.
The job of overseas visitor officers is to identify which patients are not eligible and charge them. Hospitals are meant to employ at least one officer but many do not.
A Department of Health s pokesman insisted the Government was taking ‘tough measures’ on health tourism.
ON Day Two of our investigation into abuses of the health service, it emerges that ministers have known for nine months about foreigners charging the NHS for treatment in their home countries. Yet so far, they’ve done nothing about it.
Meanwhile, we reveal how doctors and hospital managers turn a blind eye to health tourism estimated to cost taxpayers up to £3billion a year.
As a whistleblower admits: ‘Abusing the NHS is the easiest thing in the world.’
While other countries impose rigorous checks, visitors to Britain are routinely granted ‘free’ treatment to which they are blatantly unentitled – with managers only too happy to charge the NHS, so as to avoid having to chase up money from foreigners who can’t or won’t pay.
Indeed, only a quarter of those who abuse the service are flagged up; of these, just 15 per cent pay.
No wonder patients in need of expensive operations flock to Britain, while pregnant women fly in from around the world to have their babies on the NHS.
With unthinking self-righteousness, many doctors who dish out NHS numbers to all- comers say it is not their job to check patients’ entitlements, but merely to heal the sick. Others, disgracefully, accuse whistleblowers of racism.
Yet they’re colluding in a massive fraud against taxpayers, while placing an intolerable burden on an NHS so short of funds that it denies life-prolonging drugs to British cancer victims.
After the launch of our investigation, ministers have at last vowed to close the loophole that allows EU citizens who have never lived or worked here to charge us for treatment they have at home.
But this can only be the start of the long-promised crackdown on every aspect of health tourism. The job won’t be done until the world gets the message that the ‘N’ in NHS stands for National.