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Overseas Pts Costs & Management

Reference: 23-24426

Date response sent: 13/02/2024

Details of enquiry

Date response sent

13/02/24 and 16/02/24

Please provide the following information, broken down, for the past 5 financial years from 2018/19 to 2022/23:

Please provide the following information, broken down, for the past 5 financial years from 2018/19 to 2022/23:

  1. The total amounts invoiced each year to overseas visitors not entitled to free NHS care, broken down by financial year
  2. The total amounts written off each year as uncollectible from overseas visitors after invoices were generated, broken down by financial year
  3. The total amount spent chasing the above debt, if documented, broken down by financial year
  4. Any internal policies, procedures or documents outlining how challenging for your trust to recover costs from certain categories of overseas visitors, as:

a. Deceased or untraceable patients

b. Failed asylum seekers

c. Patients who have left the country

d. Any other categories

Subsequently Received Question:

  1. Thank you you say that 2 and 3 is not applicable can you advise please who does invoice patients directly ie which organisation. As I should probably make the request to them for that aspect of things? I’d be grateful if you can advise

Response sent

Please provide the following information, broken down, for the past 5 financial years from 2018/19 to 2022/23

  1. The total amounts invoiced each year to overseas visitors not entitled to free NHS care, broken down by financial year

Total amounts recharged to the home countries of those patients who were not entitled to free NHS Care at our Trust were:

a. 2022/23 £40,634

b. 2021/22 £68,634

c. 2020/21 £93,389

d. 2019/20 £68,125

e. 2018/19 £363,589

  1. The total amounts written off each year as uncollectible from overseas visitors after invoices were generated, broken down by financial year

This question is not applicable to this Trust as 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 are agreed in advance of their appointments, and recharged accordingly.

  1. The total amount spent chasing the above debt, if documented, broken down by financial year

See response to Q2 above

  1. Any internal policies, procedures or documents outlining how challenging for your trust to recover costs from certain categories of overseas visitors, as:

e. Deceased or untraceable patients

f. Failed asylum seekers

g. Patients who have left the country

h. Any other categories

Not applicable.  See response to Q2 above

Subsequently Received Question:

  1. Thank you you say that 2 and 3 is not applicable can you advise please who does invoice patients directly ie which organisation. As I should probably make the request to them for that aspect of things? I’d be grateful if you can advise

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.

As previously advised, our overseas visitor patients are not invoiced for their treatment.  The Trust does not does not engage 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 patients from their countries who are not entitled to free NHS care, so it is their home country commissioners 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..

 

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