UK: Getting Tough with ‘Health Tourists’

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4365

By Ray Furlong
BBC World at One reporter  

The government is looking for ways to stop ‘health tourists’ coming to Britain for free http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2563 to which they are not entitled.

A pilot project in London could be the future: money changes hands at the bedside and if you can’t pay you are discharged within 48 hours.

On the stroke ward at the West Middlesex University Hospital, a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=779 is facing just that prospect.  

“I’ve been here four or five days,” he says, his voice dazed and his arm quivering. “My friend pushed me and I fell down. I live here now.”

But when Andy Finlay, Income Generation Manager at the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4087 last year.

“What he is telling me now is a completely different story. I don’t believe he’s telling me the truth now, so I have made him liable for the cost of his treatment. Can you tell him that please?”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7367806.stm

2008-04-29