Overseas Patients Costs & Management

Reference: 24-25007

Date response sent: 18/04/2024

Details of enquiry

1. Please provide the total number of patients treated with a non-British national code (i.e not White British, Asian British or Black British etc.) for the last three financial years, or the last years for which you have statistics.

a. Please also provide the total number of patients treated.

2. What is the total amount in charges you have issued for treatment given to non-UK nationals for the last three financial years, or the last three years for which you have statistics.

a. What is the amount that you have successfully recovered over the same time period?

For both questions I would like the figures for each year, not one figure covering all three years.

Response sent

It’s important for your contextual understanding of our reply that we explain to you that we are not a hospital. The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a small and specialist mental health Trust, providing outpatient and mainly psychological, services via talking therapies. We do not provide acute services, nor surgical procedures, nor walk-in services, nor urgent care and no emergency services, (we don’t have an A&E department) and all our appointments are subject to a referral and booked in advance.

The Trust does not does not invoice patients directly, nor engages the services of a third party to invoice patients either. 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 those visitor patients from their countries who are not entitled to free NHS care. So it is their home country commissioners whom we invoice and recharge accordingly.

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

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

1. Please provide the total number of patients treated with a non-British national code (i.e not White British, Asian British or Black British etc.) for the last three financial years, or the last years for which you have statistics.

The Trust confirms that this data is not held.

We do not use national codes on patient records, though whilst we do have a non-mandatory field for ‘country of origin’, only 8% of records hold this data, which would not in any way be representative of the remaining 92% of patients.  For these reasons we are unable to provide this data as it is not held

a. Please also provide the total number of patients treated.

2. What is the total amount in charges you have issued for treatment given to non-UK nationals for the last three financial years, or the last three years for which you have statistics

a. What is the amount that you have successfully recovered over the same time period?

We do not invoice patients directly.

All our specialist mental health services are by appointment only, and as we do not provide emergency or walk in services,  costs with the patients’ home countries can be and are agreed in advance of the appointments, and the costs recharged and accordingly paid to us in full.