Overseas visitor charge for using A&E

photome

QrizB said:

OP isn't a big replier; we might not hear from them again on this thread.

3 threads started in 13 years… he did return to one of them 🤔

dan_starstream

elsien said:

If they had told her it wasn’t A&E, and the treatment was chargeable, would she have carried on or not? Because if she would then have declined the treatment, then clearly it wasn’t an emergency and A&E wasn’t appropriate anyway. 

She would have returned to the A&E department, where the treatment would have been free of charge.

dan_starstream

Thank you all for your thoughts.

elsien

dan_starstream said:

elsien said:

If they had told her it wasn’t A&E, and the treatment was chargeable, would she have carried on or not? Because if she would then have declined the treatment, then clearly it wasn’t an emergency and A&E wasn’t appropriate anyway. 

She would have returned to the A&E department, where the treatment would have been free of charge.

Not if she’d been triaged to not need accident and emergency, presumably? 

FrugaiMacDugal

dan_starstream said:

Thank you all for your thoughts.

Before you go, can you clear up one thing that was raised earlier in thread, did she have travel insurance?

sheramber

dan_starstream said:

elsien said:

If they had told her it wasn’t A&E, and the treatment was chargeable, would she have carried on or not? Because if she would then have declined the treatment, then clearly it wasn’t an emergency and A&E wasn’t appropriate anyway. 

She would have returned to the A&E department, where the treatment would have been free of charge.

Who would have sent her back to the ward as her condition was not appropriate for A&E.

TELLIT01

dan_starstream said:

elsien said:

If they had told her it wasn’t A&E, and the treatment was chargeable, would she have carried on or not? Because if she would then have declined the treatment, then clearly it wasn’t an emergency and A&E wasn’t appropriate anyway. 

She would have returned to the A&E department, where the treatment would have been free of charge.

No she would not have got the treatment in A&E just by going back there.  It had already been determined that A&E was not the appropriate place for treatment, so she would have gone through the same loop no matter how many times she tried.

saajan_12

dan_starstream said:

elsien said:

If they had told her it wasn’t A&E, and the treatment was chargeable, would she have carried on or not? Because if she would then have declined the treatment, then clearly it wasn’t an emergency and A&E wasn’t appropriate anyway. 

She would have returned to the A&E department, where the treatment would have been free of charge.

That's not up to the patient / family though. If the hostpital staff triaged it to be outside A&E department, then that is closed off. The options are the (paid) gastro dept or nothing. 

cmthephoenix

My wife used to work in A&E Reception. I kid you not that people would wait 4+ hours so they could get paracetamol for free rather than pay Lidl 29p for them.

Anyway as has been pointed out NHS is now really hotting up on charging overseas visitors even for A&E visits. It's been made a lot simpler as border control has become more and more computerised.
It's only going to go in one direction with the ever balooning NHS budget force feeding the introduction of AI in more areas. 

born_again

Could it also be that this means that it could also stop them leaving country till bill is paid?