Visitors not covered by Reciprocal Health Agreements

​Request 820362178 

1) How many visitors, who are not covered under a reciprocal health agreement, received emergency treatment in Jersey’s General Hospital for each of the last five years? (2021-2025) 

2) For this group, please breakdown the type of treatment and the number of people this applies to, for each of the last five years (2021-2025). 

3) Please list the total cost to the health service to treat this group, for each of the last five years (2021-2025).

Response

1

Figures for Emergency Department attendances where people with a recorded status of ‘non-reciprocal’ or ‘non-eligible’ received care are detailed in the table.

Data source: ED5A – Trak Care Emergency Dataset, ED001DM* - Maxims Emergency Dataset

* ‘Non-eligible’ category may include people who moved to the island, but were not yet eligible for free inpatient care.

Variation in the data across years may be influenced by differences in the recording capability of data systems, rather than a reflection of changes in activity. The current Electronic Patient Record system was implemented in May 2023, with figures for recent years derived from this system which offers improved functionality for capture of eligibility status. Figures for earlier years were reported using a legacy system with more limited functionality.

2

It is not possible to report the type of care or treatment provided within the Emergency Department for those identified as ‘non-reciprocal’ or ‘non-eligible’ from the central record system. Emergency Department care which does not result in an admission (or which took place before the decision to admit) is not subject to clinical coding, and such information would be documented as free-text within patients’ notes. Manual review of individual case notes would be required to identify the requested information; the resource required to do this would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

3

The information requested is not held. Emergency Department care has been provided without charge throughout the timeframe in question, and no cost data are available to report. Therefore, Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

Articles applied

Article 3 Meaning of “information held by a public authority” 

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if:

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or 

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority

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.​​