The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Overseas visitors pay £250,000 to hospital
A crackdown on health tourism has seen overseas visitors pay £150,000 more a year for the treatment they receive at Peterborough City Hospital. The Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is now collecting £250,000 a year from overseas visitors, up from approximately £92,500.
It follows a change in policy from May 2013 for patients to bring two forms of identification for hospital treatment, one of which would be either a passport, visa, or proof of having already paid for NHS treatment.
The other is for proof of UK residency.
The policy has now hit the front pages of national newspapers after Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health, told the Public Accounts Com- mittee in Parliament that “individual trusts like Peterborough” were asking patients to provide their passports.
MP for Peterborough Stewart Jackson applauded the news. He said: “The public will understand and support the changes at Peterborough City Hospital which are based on fairness and common sense.
“It happens across the world with non-urgent and elective care.
“It’s right that those patients who have paid their taxes should receive treatment rather than those who abuse the system as health tourists andit’s in cumbent on all of us, including healthcare professionals, to make sure scarce resources are directed to those in most need.”
The trust is now collecting 95 per cent of chargeable income from overseas visitors, more than double what it was collecting before 2013.
North West Cambridgeshire MP Shailesh Vara said: “It is right that the NHS is not abused by those who travel to have free treatment in England.”
A trust spokeswoman said if patients are missing one or both parts of their required ID, “they are written to after the appointment, asking them to provide this at the next appointment or to come into the hospital with them.”
She added: “It is difficult to provide a figure for howmany have not been given treatment due to not having the right ID because this could be patient or hospital choice. We are looking at an electronic system to be able to identify these patients.”
The spokeswoman also said urgent treatment is always provided, with costs sought for afterwards. She said: “There is no concern that people who might be in desperate need of care are turned away.”
Mr Wormald said the Department of Health was looking into whether more trusts should go down the same route as the trust in Peterborough. Health tourism is classed as the deliberate use of the NHS by people who are not entitled to it.