Migrants denied NHS care for average of 37 weeks

New research has found that migrants who need NHS care are being denied treatment for an average of 37 weeks.

The report has discovered that one in three end up waiting between six and 12 months, whilst some face even longer delays and in one case a woman with a serious heart complaint could not access care for more than four years.

The people affected are refugees, asylum seekers and others to whom the NHS has denied care, often in breach of the rules, because it deems them ‘not ordinarily resident’ in the UK under the government’s ‘hostile environment’ approach to immigration.

Doctors of the World said that delays are just one week shorter on average for migrants whose poor health means they need what the government calls ‘urgent or immediately necessary’ treatment. However, despite the seriousness of their condition they have to wait on average for 36 weeks after diagnosis before receiving healthcare and in one case urgent treatment was withheld for two and a half years.

The delays are in stark contrast to the maximum 18-week waiting times within which people in England should be treated by the NHS. Before the coronavirus pandemic, 80 per cent were being seen within that timeframe.

The report prompted renewed calls for the government to scrap the requirement it introduced in 2017 for migrants to pay 150 per cent of the cost of normal NHS care upfront before they can receive it.

Anna Miller, head of policy and advocacy at the charity, said: “These long delays involved a protracted period of all-consuming extreme uncertainty, and anxiety and distress for patients with cancer, kidney failure and heart problems, who end up in a state of horrendous limbo.”