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DH considering ‘controversial’ plans to require patients to show passports

NHS patients could be required to show their passports as part of a drive to crack down on the cost of health tourism, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health told MPs.

Chris Wormald appeared at a Public Accounts Committee hearing yesterday to look into a National Audit Office (NAO) report, which found that the department is not on track to meet its target of recovering £500m a year from overseas patients who receive treatment on the NHS.

He told the committee that the department was looking at the example of trusts such as Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals FT, where patients are required to show their passport and proof of address.

“Now that is obviously a controversial thing to do, but in terms of how you get those numbers up, those are the kind of things we’ll look at,” said Wormald.

He added that although no evaluation of the policy had been made yet, early figures indicated that it did lead to an increase in revenue recovered.

Separately, a spokesperson for Peterborough and Stamford said: “In response to a national requirement, our trust devised a process for recovering money for the NHS from the treatment of non-EU citizens.

“This was looked at by the Cabinet Office and we understand our system may be used as a basis for other trusts to follow. We are delighted to have been identified as an exemplar of good practice.”

The BMA, however, criticised the proposals, with a spokesperson commenting: “Ensuring eligibility for NHS services is always important, but these proposals go much too far and it is unlikely they could ever be turned into a serious policy that would be accepted by patients and the public.”

The drive to crack down on health tourism comes at a time of unprecedented financial pressure for the NHS, with the NAO warning today that the service’s financial problems are “endemic” and “unsustainable”.

Recently, St George’s University Hospital FT also attracted controversy recently when it announced an initiative to require women to prove their nationality to receive obstetric care.

In the inquiry, Wormald also compared the UK unfavourably to countries with private healthcare, saying it was “obviously much easier” to recover revenue if all patients were being charged.

Bob Alexander, executive director of resources and deputy chief executive of NHS Improvement, who also appeared at the hearing, said his organisation was actively looking into identifying best practice for cost recovery.

“What we need to do is to work with organisations who are obviously identifying and collecting appropriate charges from foreign visitors and migrants, identify what that best practice is, and then make that best practice available to all,” he said.

Alexander added that this would be followed by regular reporting on whether appropriate measures were in place in acute trusts, and by using “oversight arrangements” to intervene in trusts that were failing to meet standards.

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