UK hospitals ‘facing unpaid bills after treating foreign nationals’

A new report has suggested that hospitals are facing mounting unpaid bills as a result of providing treatment to foreign nationals who were not entitled to care.

Data collated by Pulse magazine under the Freedom of Information Act has shown that 35 NHS acute trusts are owed an average of 230,000 pounds from ineligible overseas patients.

St George's Healthcare Trust had the largest outstanding debts of two million pounds from the 3.55 million pounds invoiced to foreign nationals from April 2009, while Royal Wolverhampton was the least efficient in terms of collection rates, retrieving only 24 percent of the 419,000 pounds it is owed.

Dr Richard Vautrey, a GP in Leeds and deputy chair of the General Practitioners Committee, said it is important that measures are put in place to ensure the system is not being exploited.

However, he added: "We need to be careful we are not putting barriers in place that prevent people getting access to healthcare."

This comes at a time when the NHS is attempting to make around 20 billion pounds of efficiency savings in order to protect frontline care quality, while reducing budgetary outlay.