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19/04/2012
Audit Finds Hospitals Overcharging For Hospital Care
A watchdog has found that NHS money is being wasted by hospitals in England, who are wrongly charging the health service for treating short-stay patients.
The Audit Commission found that hospitals could earn more than five times as much by recording them as inpatients rather than outpatients.
Adding that overcharging and the managerial rows it caused took up time and resources.
The NHS currently spends £6.8bn a year on short-stay patients - 17% of the hospital budget.
During its review, the Audit Commission took evidence from a small number of hospital trusts and management bodies over how they dealt with patients whose treatment lasted less than 24 hours.
It found plenty of evidence of the same treatment being recorded as an inpatient in one hospital and an outpatient in another.
One trust said the time spent dealing with the disputes caused by the issue was taking up the equivalent of one staff member's entire workload.
The watchdog however has said it is willing to give hospitals the benefit of the doubt, saying it did not appear to be a systematic abuse of the systems.
With advancements in medicine more and more treatment and recovery is being done during short visits rather than overnight stays. However hospitals continue to list them as inpatients - someone who has been admitted into hospital.
And because they get more money for them, they were reluctant to class them as outpatients and charge less.
To illustrate the issue, the report gives an example of an 18-year-old boy who goes to hospital for a simple operation to remove a lesion.
He only spends a short time in theatre and is then discharged.
The hospital that classes him as an inpatient would get £729, whereas if he was treated as an outpatient it would be £116.
A Department of Health spokeswoman added: "The NHS must make sure that they are following the updated guidance to record the care they give to patients accurately and consistently to make sure that it gets good value for every pound it spends."
(H)
The Audit Commission found that hospitals could earn more than five times as much by recording them as inpatients rather than outpatients.
Adding that overcharging and the managerial rows it caused took up time and resources.
The NHS currently spends £6.8bn a year on short-stay patients - 17% of the hospital budget.
During its review, the Audit Commission took evidence from a small number of hospital trusts and management bodies over how they dealt with patients whose treatment lasted less than 24 hours.
It found plenty of evidence of the same treatment being recorded as an inpatient in one hospital and an outpatient in another.
One trust said the time spent dealing with the disputes caused by the issue was taking up the equivalent of one staff member's entire workload.
The watchdog however has said it is willing to give hospitals the benefit of the doubt, saying it did not appear to be a systematic abuse of the systems.
With advancements in medicine more and more treatment and recovery is being done during short visits rather than overnight stays. However hospitals continue to list them as inpatients - someone who has been admitted into hospital.
And because they get more money for them, they were reluctant to class them as outpatients and charge less.
To illustrate the issue, the report gives an example of an 18-year-old boy who goes to hospital for a simple operation to remove a lesion.
He only spends a short time in theatre and is then discharged.
The hospital that classes him as an inpatient would get £729, whereas if he was treated as an outpatient it would be £116.
A Department of Health spokeswoman added: "The NHS must make sure that they are following the updated guidance to record the care they give to patients accurately and consistently to make sure that it gets good value for every pound it spends."
(H)
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