NHS Business Authority - links to UC

The claimant is getting UC with no income so will qualify for reimbursement of travel expenses to NHS appointments.

It seems like the difficulty has arisen because some of the appointments were at private hospitals (funded by the NHS) and (unlike most NHS hospitals?)  they had no office where the claimant could take his receipts etc to trigger reimbursement.

It seems that the reimbursements are consequently being managed by the NHS Business Authority in Newcastle and they are taking a very long time to send the money.

What my cl is not altogether clear about is whether it is his responsibility to provide confirmation of his UC to the NHS BA or do they have the ability to contact UC themselves?

We have suggested he contact his MP to see if the MP can ‘encourage’ the NHS BA to get on with it but the cl would find it difficult to provide proof of UC time after time, hence the query about their access to UC

Dear Pete,

When I have helped clients to challenge NHS Business Services Authority demands for payment of charges and penalty notices, as the clients have a passporting benefit, we had to supply proof of the passporting benefit. Under GDPR, I cannot see how NHS Business Services Authority could be provided with any personal information by DWP.  Of course, they could have a service level agreement I know nothing about.

I have always found NHS BSA to be more obstructive and unhelpful rather than co-operative, so if your client offered to give them authority to collect proof of benefit from DWP, I suspect they would refuse to engage and insist that your client supply the evidence.

Good luck

Best regards

Chris

‘NHSBSA (NHS Business Services Authority) have been able to check against
UC (Universal Credit) directly with DWP (Department for Work and Pensions)
since October 2017’.

See FOI from Peter Turville formerly from these parts and OWR - https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/exemption_from_charges_for_unive

Previously featuring here related to NHS prescription and dental penalty stuff - https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/12939/P60