Overseas Visitors Improvement team

The Overseas Visitor Improvement team provides support to help trusts and non-NHS providers recover treatment costs from patients who are not eligible for free NHS care.

To ensure they make a fair contribution to their healthcare costs, we work with the Cost Recovery team and the Reciprocal Health Agreements teams at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the Reciprocal Health and Specialised Commissioning teams within NHS England and NHS Improvement, with NHS Digital, the Home Office, NHS Business Standards Authority (NHSBSA) and other key stakeholders to support providers of secondary healthcare in overseas visitor identification and income collection.

Who is it for?

Whilst our work is mainly with acute NHS trusts, private hospitals providing NHS services, mental health and community healthcare services are also in scope of the overseas visitor charging regulations.

All providers are encouraged to join the national overseas visitors community forum to learn from each other, share ideas and ask for advice. To join, please email nhscostrecovery@dhsc.gov.uk

Our support

As part of this support we will continually be looking to:

  • ensure the overseas visitor charging regulations are applied in a consistent, fair and compassionate way by all providers
  • develop best practice models
  • achieve 95% of the potential additional identified income from overseas visitors
  • maximise identification of European economic area patients who have either a European health insurance card (for emergency) or S2 (for planned care)
  • improve the use of data funnelling and automated screening techniques to systematically identify potentially chargeable patients
  • increase the collection of invoiced income to reduce debt levels
  • develop metrics to allow providers to benchmark their performances.

It is of paramount importance that the overseas visitor charging regulations are implemented as intended, with immediately necessary or urgent treatment (which includes all maternity care) neither delayed nor denied, and protections in place for the most vulnerable.

If you would like support or advice, please contact nhsi.overseascostimprovement@nhs.net

Resources

Case Studies

User guide for overseas visitor managers (OVMs) – Message Exchange for Social care and Health (MESH)

This user guide for the OVM MESH Service helps overseas visitor managers (OVMs) working in secondary care to identify patients who may need to pay for their healthcare.