Welsh patients losing money for English hospitals

Mar 19 2008 by Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail

ENGLISH hospitals near the border are losing tens of millions of pounds because of anomalies in the way Wales and England pay for treatment, an NHS Trust chief executive said yesterday.

Tom Taylor, who runs the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, said he was £2m down per year – with Trusts in Bristol, Hereford and Chester in the same position.

Mr Taylor’s trust covers a population of around 500,000, of whom 60,000 live in Mid Wales.

The English patients have their treatment funded through Whitehall’s “payment by results” system, while Welsh patients are funded under old-style “block contracts” – leaving the Trusts out of pocket.

“I am not getting a fair deal to the tune of £2m,” said Mr Taylor.

Westminster ministers should pay the Assembly Government the money, which should then be passed on to the Trusts, he told MPs on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee.

He said, “The amount needed to resolve that is in the tens of millions, out of a £100bn NHS budget. If the English system paid the Welsh system to pay it back, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

Differing waiting times targets and different funding systems on either side of the border have caused a headache for NHS managers, and there are fears of a backlash against devolution as a result.

Christine Russell, the Labour MP for City of Chester, raised eyebrows two weeks ago when she said there was “some truth in the argument that English patients were actually subsidising Welsh patients”.

But Mr Taylor insisted all his patients were treated equally, and dismissed the idea that Welsh patients should always stay in Wales for treatment as “clinically unsafe”.

The NHS Confederation said yesterday that policy divergences as a result of devolution were “creating difficulties” and there was a need for “clarity from Government”.