PRIORSLEGH MEDICAL CENTRE

Civic Centre, (Off) Park Lane, Poynton, Cheshire, SK12 1GP Tel: 01625 872299 Fax: 01625 859948

Overseas Visitors Eligibility for Free NHS Treatment

Past or present payment of UK taxes or National Insurance contributions are not taken into account when establishing eligibility to receive free NHS treatment.  NHS eligibility relates to being ‘ordinarily resident’ in the United Kingdom.  Overseas visitors are defined as persons of any nationality, including British nationals, not ordinarily resident in the UK.

The courts have decided that a person is regarded as ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK if he or she is lawfully living in the UK voluntarily and for a settled purpose.  Anybody who is in the UK for ‘a settled purpose’ will normally be considered to be ‘ordinarily resident’; in practice, following court cases, this means anyone who is in the UK for a period of six months or more.  Special regulations apply to EEA residents and visitors from bilateral healthcare agreement countries.

Immediately Necessary Care

As NHS contractors, GPs have a duty to provide immediately necessary treatment to any patient within their practice area regardless of whether or not that patient is otherwise entitled to NHS care.  GPs are entitled to use their clinical judgement to determine what constitutes immediately necessary care.  This is likely to include immediately necessary treatment that is required to treat  new conditions and pre-existing conditions that have become exacerbated during the period of a person’s stay in the UK, including prescriptions for medication without which the patient’s symptoms may become exacerbated.