You could soon have to show ID if you want hospital treatment ‘to stop foreigners blagging NHS care’
Move comes after National Audit Office reveal bid to recover £500m from overseas health tourists is likely fall severely short
HOSPITAL patients may have to show ID in future to ensure overseas visitors do not take advantage of the NHS.
Officials are considering asking for two forms, including passports, before allowing free care, it has been revealed.
Top civil servant at the Department of Health, Chris Wormald, admitted yesterday that the idea was controversial but had proved successful in trials.
His officials are examining whether the proposals, which would be used in high areas of immigration, should be rolled out nationally.
Non-urgent hospital treatment and maternity services would be services facing initial checks over casualty and GP services, it's reported.
Current regulation states that EU governments should be billed for the treatment its citizens receive, while non-EU residents should use insurance or pay for themselves.
However, failures by staff to ensure checks are properly carried out has resulted in many of the charges not being collected.
It comes after the National Audit Office said a bid to recover £500million from foreigners is likely to get just £295.5million.
Official figures show the government was charged £674million for the care of UK citizens in Europe in 2014/15 yet demanded just £50million for the care of EEA nationals in UK hospitals.
Tory Charlie Elphicke, of the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, asked yesterday: “Do you not think that the taxpayer is being taken for a ride? Not by tourists but by political correctness and a non-charging culture in the NHS?”
Senior Department of Health official Chris Wormald admitted that the NHS has a “lot further to go” when it comes to reclaiming cash.
He added that there were challenges in the identification of people who should be charged for elements of NHS care and that some trusts are already running a trial where patients are asked to bring ID.
He said the Department of Health was looking into whether more trusts should go down that route.
"We have some trusts that are looking at asking for two forms of ID before treatment," Mr Wormald said.
"Now that is obviously quite a controversial thing to do but in terms of 'how do you get those numbers up', those are the kinds of things we want to look at.
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"We don't have evaluated results of those yet, but what those trusts are reporting is that does lead to an increase in identification."
He added: "There are individual trusts like Peterborough who are doing that, who are reporting that it makes a big difference and there you are saying 'please come with two forms of identity, your passport and your address' and they use that to check whether people are eligible or not.
"Now it is obviously quite a controversial thing to do to say to the entire population you now have to prove identity."
Last month it emerged that pregnant women could be forced to show ID before giving birth at St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London, where non-EU mums accounted for a fifth of all deliveries.
Hospital bosses were forced to act after 900 foreign expectant mothers used the NHS for free.
With a routine birth costing £5,000 on average, the trust was left with a bill of around £4.5million.
Just 20 per cent was recovered and debt collection firms are being used to claim the rest.
But PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier expressed concern about British residents that don't have photo ID and those who would struggle to find a utility bill.
"I have constituents who have no photo IDs," she said.
"Because they have never travelled they have no passport, they have no driver's licence because they have never driven, they still live at home because they can't afford to move out so they've never had a utility bill in their name.
"(They are) perfectly entitled to health care - British born, British resident - how are you going to make sure that people have access easily to the National Health Service without having to go through a very humiliating and impossible to meet set of demands?"
Mr Wormald replied: "This is why we are going very slowly on some of these questions and individual trusts are trying these out."
There are different rules for charging visitors from the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland and from those outside the EEA.
Visitors from the EEA are usually covered by agreements under which their home country pays for treatment.
But there are big differences between the amount of money other European countries claim from the UK and how much the UK pays out, the Committee heard.
The Committee drew on official figures released earlier this year show that in 2014/15, £674 million was charged to the UK government for the care of British citizens abroad.
But the amount charged for the care of EEA nationals in British hospitals was just £49 million.
Mr Wormald said the figure was "hugely driven" by the number of UK pensioners who live abroad.
He explained theree are 62 Spanish pensioners living in the UK compared to 70,000 British retirees living in Spain.
Mr Wormald added: "The first charging systems were introduced in the health service in 1982 and essentially there was then three decades where very little happened.
"In the last three years we have made much more progress than we have in the previous 30.
"But we fully accept that while we have done a lot there is an awful lot more to do before we could hand on heart say we are doing our duty to the taxpayer in this area.
"We think we have achieved a lot and a lot more than has been done previously but we are not at all defensive that we have got a lot further to go."
The British Medical Association said the proposals went “much too far”. It argued the public would not accept them.