NHS Debt - Unsure

Grumpy_chap

metal675 said:

My family had travel insurance from their home country which covers for cost of hospitalization and treatment. However the policy requires that claim needs to be made within 30 days of incident or hospital admission.

Why didn't they file the insurance claim as soon as they left hospital?
A claim can be filed without the value of the claim being known.  

metal675 said:

Here the problem begins, I receive a letter from NHS trust after 6 weeks asking to provide the details of the patient and if they are eligible for a free treatment. I admit, I ignored this letter. There was no mention of costs or any bill or invoice in this letter - simply asking to provide eligibility for treatment.

Why did you ignore that letter and not act / pass it to your relatives so that they could deal with it appropriately and lodge the insurance claim at that point?


Can your relatives lodge the insurance claim now?  It may be that the "time-bar" on notifying the claim is not enforceable.  I don't know, and an overseas policy may be different in any case, but I suspect that a "time-bar" that is shorter than the statute period of limitation may not be enforceable if it were a wholly UK policy.  (I accept it is not a wholly UK policy.) @DullGreyGuy may know.

born_again

I know that our main A/E have signs up about non UK residents & the procedure for their treatment.

https://www.leedsth.nhs.uk/patients/overseas/

Could the issue here be that they gave OP's details. Instead of the required doc's?

DullGreyGuy

Which country are they from? How enforceable are the 30 day's limit on claims? Have they actually attempted to talk tot heir insurers about the bill? In principle a claim should have been registered at the time they called them and then put on hold for the paperwork to follow... the claim may have been closed due to the timescales but should be able to be reopened. Certainly in the UK time limits on consumer insurance can broadly be ignored unless the delay causes significant detriment to the insurers ability to investigate the claim or has caused escalation of costs (eg the car dent that could have been just pulled and touched up but now is rusting or if the NHS had applied late payment fees). 

The NHS isn't a commercial organisation, their billing is slow and isn't done by doctors/nurses. In motor accidents insurer have to reimburse for the initial emergency response but it is often 6 months plus before the bill arrives. Once they do get the bill out they are then better at chasing. 

Ultimately if the relative wants to be able to return the UK risk free they need to pay up, if they are happy not coming back to the UK there is low probability of them being material chased. 

soolin

born_again said:

I know that our main A/E have signs up about non UK residents & the procedure for their treatment.

https://www.leedsth.nhs.uk/patients/overseas/

Could the issue here be that they gave OP's details. Instead of the required doc's?

Re your last paragraph I did wonder that as OP talks about ‘themselves’ in Original post as not claiming on the insurance in time. Might it even be a similar name which has confused the system and added to the fact that they probably had to supply a UK address they were using during their stay? 

Grumpy_chap

metal675 said:

- they did inform the insurance of treatment before admission. they were told by insurance that is fine, pay any bills yourself and claim back within 30 days as per our policy by sending the invoices and payment proof for your claim to be valid.

I missed this part when I put my previous comment.

So, your relative notified the insurer (meeting the 30 days from incident).
The relative could not pay any bills before they are received.
The bill has now been received, for £4k.
The relative should now pay the bill.
Once paid, the relative can claim back within 30 days (of payment) by sending the invoices and payment proof.

LightFlare

whilst i agree with most (all?) of the response, I am still failing to see how this is the OPs problem/debt

Forward the letters to your parents to sort out - I assume they are capable adults. They can choose to pay or not (and accept the consequences)

cannugec5

I have a lot of sympathy with the OP.
 We have previously had foreign guests to stay who have required NHS treatment. Despite repeated requests for information about what to pay and to whom they left the country none the wiser. However no invoices were subsequently received. 

It really isn’t easy to pay the NHS if they don’t proactively provide a means to pay. 

A&E’s and GP surgeries often have no mechanism for accepting payment. 

Of course I fully agree that those who are meant to pay must pay but equally the NHS must step up and make accepting payments from foreign nationals the norm and not an exception. 

Flugelhorn

cannugec5 said:

I have a lot of sympathy with the OP.
 We have previously had foreign guests to stay who have required NHS treatment. Despite repeated requests for information about what to pay and to whom they left the country none the wiser. However no invoices were subsequently received. 

It really isn’t easy to pay the NHS if they don’t proactively provide a means to pay. 

A&E’s and GP surgeries often have no mechanism for accepting payment. 

Of course I fully agree that those who are meant to pay must pay but equally the NHS must step up and make accepting payments from foreign nationals the norm and not an exception. 

primary care ie GP is free and there is no system for payment there 

 - used to work as OOH GP at weekends etc and the standard fee was £75 .. only we had no card machine and actually no system to deal with cash.. so often no-one bothered and then the NHS just stopped charging. Theoretically we could have done private prescriptions but that caused more problems at the local chemist and anyway we didn't have private prescription pads handy 

DullGreyGuy

Flugelhorn said:

cannugec5 said:

I have a lot of sympathy with the OP.
 We have previously had foreign guests to stay who have required NHS treatment. Despite repeated requests for information about what to pay and to whom they left the country none the wiser. However no invoices were subsequently received. 

It really isn’t easy to pay the NHS if they don’t proactively provide a means to pay. 

A&E’s and GP surgeries often have no mechanism for accepting payment. 

Of course I fully agree that those who are meant to pay must pay but equally the NHS must step up and make accepting payments from foreign nationals the norm and not an exception. 

primary care ie GP is free and there is no system for payment there 

 - used to work as OOH GP at weekends etc and the standard fee was £75 .. only we had no card machine and actually no system to deal with cash.. so often no-one bothered and then the NHS just stopped charging. Theoretically we could have done private prescriptions but that caused more problems at the local chemist and anyway we didn't have private prescription pads handy 

GPs frequently offer private practice work like doing medical reports for insurance (claims or quotes) or medicals for certain professions which is non-NHS services. In principle they need mechanisms to take those payments but agree that most prefer cheques/bank transfers and very few have card machines etc. 

Private prescriptions are often done online these days with systems like Signature Rx, or at least in my experience.