The National Audit Office (NAO) has today published its report on the Department's work to help the NHS increase the costs recovered from treating overseas visitors between September 2015 and August 2016.
The report has found that the Department of Health and the NHS, working with other parts of government, have made progress to recover more of the cost of treating overseas visitors who are not entitled to free hospital treatment but, if current trends continue and the charging rules remain the same, will not achieve the government’s ambition of recovering up to £500 million a year by 2017-18.
Below is the response from the Department on this report.
A Department of Health spokesperson said:
This Government was the first to put in place measures to ensure the NHS isn't abused, and as this report finds, we are making very good progress — the amount of income identified has already more than trebled in three years to £289million.
We consulted earlier this year on extending the charging of migrants and visitors using the NHS to other areas of healthcare. We will set out further steps in due course to ensure we deliver on our objective to recover up to £500 million a year by the middle of this Parliament.
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