camden-news-private

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

Camden New Journal - by ROISIN GADELRAB
Published: 16 August 2007

UCLH: owed money

Private and overseas debt costs hospital trust £1m

HOSPITAL chiefs have wiped the slate clean of nearly £1 million of medical debts run up by private and overseas patients.
Financial wizards at University College London Hospital have decided to cut their losses and abandon efforts to recover costs from 328 indebted patients.
More than half of those owing money are either no longer alive, have only paid part of their debts owing to financial problems or had small debts which, according to the hospital “were not economic to pursue”.
The debts, accumulated over the past five years, amount to £732,000 from overseas patients and £184,000 from private patients. This makes up less than 0.1 per cent of the hospital’s income over the same time.
The write-off was agreed by the hospital’s audit committee in April.
Neil Woodnick, chairman of Camden Primary Care Trust’s patient and public involvement forum said: “This million pounds will have to be met by the British taxpayer. In future it must be payment up front or no treatment. The whole question of medical tourism needs to be discussed in an open debate. I personally welcome that private patients are treated on the NHS because it provides a valuable resource of funding. But the whole system needs to be tightened up. I’m sure this doesn’t happen in America. At the end of the day this means anybody can jump the queue and we’ll end up paying the bill.”
A UCLH spokesman said: “UCLH is one of the biggest trusts in the country serving one of the most diverse populations.
“Being in central London it is inevitable we will receive a high number of overseas patients.
“We do all we can to identify overseas patients and to charge for services provided. A high proportion of our overseas visitors come in via A&E and are then transferred to appropriate wards and hospitals within the trust.
“We have an overseas visitors team which examines patient notes and A&E records to identify overseas patients and which then raises invoices.
“However if these are not paid, we have limited powers to force payment. As per the Department of Health guidelines we pursue the debt as far as we can in accordance with our credit control policy. However, these debts are often uneconomic or impossible to collect once patients return home overseas.”
He said the hospital’s specialist debt collection agency was unable to locate the overseas patients in about one-third of cases and that in one in four cases there was little likelihood of successful legal action in the country of origin.
He added: “It is not possible to give a full breakdown by country of origin without a time consuming review of the prior year records.
“However the cases where it has not been possible to locate the patient cover a number of different countries each year including China, America, Iran and Nigeria.”

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

Your Comments: