Health

Fury as London’s biggest NHS trust demands patients prove they have right to free care



London’s biggest NHS trust today sparked anger after revealing plans to ask all patients to prove they are entitled to free treatment.

Barts Health, which runs five hospitals in east London, will order identity checks on anyone unable to assure staff that they have lived in the UK for the past 12 months. 

It is already making about 100 enquiries a week to the Home Office to establish the immigration status of patients.

Hospital chiefs say they have no option but to implement new national rules cracking down on “health tourism”. 

They insist anyone needing urgent care will be treated. But campaigners claim the “dangerous” approach is scaring off “many people”, especially in east London’s deprived communities who are entitled to free care but may not be able to produce documents. 

Last year, Barts invoiced more than 1,900 patients a total of £13 million for care they were not entitled to receive free of charge. 

Campaigners from the North-East London Save Our NHS group will this evening protest outside the trust’s annual meeting by erecting a mock “immigration checkpoint”. 

A letter signed by more than 600 activists and organisations will call for the immigration checks to be suspended.

Dr Jackie Applebee, a GP in Tower Hamlets, said: “This approach is dangerous and putting people’s lives at risk. 

It is deterring people from seeking healthcare altogether, or making them delay seeking help until their health problem escalates into a full-blown emergency.” 

Barts said that “for many years” it had asked A&E or maternity department patients where they had lived for the previous 12 months. 

However, this “risked being inequitable” as staff might interpret the rules differently in querying the right to free care. 

Under the new system, staff will ask “all patients” for residency details. 

Any suspected of being liable to pay will have to fill in a form that asks for passport data and immigration status. 

The details will be checked against the NHS patient database and with the Home Office.  

People ordinarily resident in the UK, and migrants with indefinite leave to remain, qualify for free care. Patients whose need for treatment is deemed non-urgent will be asked to pay up-front. 

Barts, which has posted a £109 million deficit, said the £13 million cost of treating ineligible patients amounted to less than one per cent of its workload.



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