FOI-01128

Request Please forward your policy regarding protocol for transferring patient records to debt agencies Response A case will be passed to a Debt Collection Agency (DCA) if:  the case is open  payments have not been made  the surcharge letter was sent more than 2 months ago. The DCA works on our behalf to trace a patient until their debt is paid. The DCA will contact the patient by letter, call or email if contact details are traced. The DCA will only discuss repayment and is unable to decide if a case should be closed or eased. No additional charges are added when a case is passed to a DCA and it will not affect a patient’s credit rating. The above information means that the NHSBSA does not sell the debt to another organisation. Patients are informed of the following in the surcharge letter: “If you do not respond by this date, we will treat this as a deliberate decision to avoid paying charges that you owe the NHS and we may start debt recovery proceedings” The NHSBSA privacy notice says at https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/our-policies/privacy: “We may share your information with other organisations:  acting on our behalf” If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact [email protected]. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented. The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2023” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence. Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.