Covid-19 tests for private patients (FOI)

Request

During the Covid-9 Pandemic, Hospital admissions are required to have a Covid-19 test prior to admission. These services are provided the Government of Jersey Health and Social Services. If the Hospital admission is related to a Private Patient, then an Invoice is raised payable to the personal Account of a named private individual not to Jersey Health and Community Services.

A

How many Covid-19 tests have been carried out for Private Patient admissions by Health and Social Services?

B

How much revenue has been remitted back to Health and Social Services for providing Covid-19 testing for Private Patient Hospital admissions?

Response

A and B 

Following an extensive review of systems, it has been concluded that the information, as requested, is not held in recorded form. In order to answer the request the data would need to be extracted from various sources and manipulated, aside from taking more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do that work, the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data in order to provide a response. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

It should be noted however that all such business costs are fully audited.

Please also note the response provided by the Minister for Health and Social Services to a written question on 6 October 2020 in the following link.

WQ.362/2020

Article applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.