Foreign NHS cheats push aside cancer patients: Fury as life
One of Britain's most senior surgeons has condemned having to put bogus patients before those entitled to cancer care in a creaking health service. Professor J Meirion Thomas has called on ministers to introduce an "NHS passport" to combat the abuse."It is so easy to breach the system. It is awful for me as a doctor to have to treat someone I know is ineligible," he said.Under NHS rules any patient urgently referred by a GP for cancer surgery must receive treatment within 62 days. Professor Thomas said bogus patients about to breach the 62-day rule leapfrogged legitimate sufferers awaiting surgery."Even if I do recognise a patient as being ineligible, I am not allowed to declare that because the minute that patient walks in to see me I have a duty of confidentiality," he explained."Sometimes I have to cancel a genuine patient to allow a tourist to come through. That really, really bothers me. I know exactly what happens then. They do not attend follow-up appointments. Why? Because they have gone back to wherever they have come from. It really happens so often, weekly I would say."
Non-British residents receive an annual £1.9billion of free NHS treatment for which they should be charged. Health tourists, those coming to Britain for free care, account for about £300million.Professor Thomas, a consultant surgeon at London's Royal Marsden hospital, blew the whistle on the scale of health tourism earlier this year.He was speaking about the toll it had on cancer patients as he gave evidence to MPs scrutinising the Immigration Bill.Jacqueline Bishop, co-chairman of the NHS Overseas Visitors Advisory Group, told MPs it was harder to get video store membership than access the best medical care for free."It is not about failed asylum seekers or the vulnerable groups who need our support. We have to put them aside. We are talking about people who are coming just for care, not to stay permanently," she said."Anyone who says that they do not have overseas visitors in maternity, either they are not doing their job properly or just have their head in the sand."She warned of "hospital surfers" who switched between locations for treatment to keep costs below the £1,000 threshold at which debt must be reported to the Department of Health.With the current system of charging overseas visitors so chaotic, Ms Bishop said most hospitals were reluctant to identify health tourists because it would leave them out of pocket. "Like it or not, that is the fact.Every overseas visitor whom I identify I cannot charge the clinical commissioning group for. "We therefore have two choices: get it off the patient or write it off."There are NHS Trusts out there that do not identify overseas visitors because it is not in their best interests."Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to impose a £200 charge on some visitors seeking medical treatment.Professor Thomas has criticised the move.
He suggests it would become the world's cheapest private insurance scheme, offering overseas visitors bargain-basement prices for procedures costing British taxpayers thousands.Just 20 per cent of overseas visitors who are identified and charged actually pay.Professor Thomas is campaigning for a pre-registration system requiring everyone to prove their right to NHS care before they could access it."There should be no chargeable patients in the NHS," he insisted.He warned maternity tourism was so "rife" that staff at one hospital had dubbed Nigerian patients arriving for care the "Lagos shuttle".