Royal Surrey Foundation Trust is set to take legal action against the private healthcare insurance giant, Bupa, accusing the company of failing to fully reimburse the NHS for treating its members, HSJ has learned.
Ross Dunworth, finance director at the Trust, says Bupa is “behaving in an immoral way” when it comes to paying the trust for treating its patients within a specialist unit.
The dispute centres around the trust’s brachytherapy service, which treats private as well as NHS patients. Mr Dunworth, also deputy chief executive, says Bupa has refused to pay the full amounts owed, citing issues around coding of treatments. In a statement, Bupa suggested it did not receive invoices from the trust within the contractual six-month period, and had received 65 historic invoices earlier this year which were “unexpected”. Mr Dunworth disputed this, saying there had not been an issue with late invoicing. He told HSJ the company owes the trust around £400,000.
Full story in The HSJ, 23 December 2021
