Defaulters Referred to Home Office for Unpaid Secondary Healthcare

Reference: 25-26183

Date response sent: 24/07/2025

Details of enquiry

1. The number of individuals who should have paid for secondary healthcare, but have not, who were referred to the Home Office, broken down by year for 2018 – 2024.
2. The number of individuals who should have paid for secondary healthcare, but have not, who were referred to the Home Office, broken down by year for 2018 – 2024.
3. Please set out the current total outstanding balance due to your trust by debtors who have not paid for secondary healthcare

Response sent

Your request is not applicable to the Trust, the Trust does not hold data relevant to any of your questions.  Nil patients have been invoiced directly for their treatment.

Costs of treatment for visitor patients from other countries would be invoiced and recharged to their home country commissioners in line with the relevant agreement with their country, and the Trust has specific agreements in place with the following countries; Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Republic of Ireland to whom we levy charges for visitor patients from their countries, who are not entitled to free NHS care.

So it is the patient’s home country commissioners whom we invoice and recharge accordingly and not the patients themselves.

Given the nature of the services we provide, and the fact that all our treatments are subject to both acceptance of a referral and a waiting period, we would not ordinarily see overseas visitor patients from outside the countries listed above.

Any visitor Patients outside of these frameworks would be covered by either UK reciprocal healthcare agreements with non-EU countries – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) or Healthcare for visitors to the UK from the EU – GOV.UK

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust does not offer any walk-in appointments or emergency or urgent care services.  Booked appointments are subject to an accepted referral and advance booking.

Our Trust is a small specialist NHS mental health trust with a focus on training and education, as well as providing a range of mental health services and therapies for children and their families, young people and adults.

We provide outpatient and mainly psychological, services via talking therapies. We do not provide acute services, nor surgical procedures, and do not have an A&E department.