Hospital bills for those without free healthcare entitlement (FOI)

Request

Please can you provide the following:

A

The amount paid in hospital bills by Jersey residents who don't qualify for free healthcare between January 2018 and January 2021 (broken down annually)

B

The amount paid in hospital bills by non-Jersey residents who don't qualify for free healthcare between January 2018 and January 2021 (broken down annually)

C

The number of appeals against charges between January 2018 and January 2021 (broken down annually)

D

The amount of unpaid hospital bills written off as 'non-recoverable' between January 2018 and January 2021 (broken down annually)

Response

A to D

Please see table answering elements of the request below.

Residents will be charged for healthcare services within the hospital if they do not meet the following criteria

• working in and paying social security and tax in Jersey for 6 continuous months

• living in jersey for 12 months

• licensed to work in jersey

• permanently entitled returning Jersey resident who qualifies under birth + 10 years residency or 30 years residency in jersey

All residents that are invoiced as Non-Eligible will have been done so due to not meeting the criteria above. These residents will all be Jersey residents with Jersey addresses.

It has not been possible to derive the Jersey / non-Jersey split of Non-Eligible patients within the timescales permitted under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 and therefore Article 16 has been applied. The vast majority of the Non-Eligible patients invoiced will hold a Jersey address.

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.