Consell de Govern met this Monday to discuss a plan where an external contractor would gather bills from tourists who needed hospital or clinic care on the Balearic Islands during their holidays, especially when they suffered accidents or health issues in the archipelago.
About 80% of unpaid charges come from residents of Turkey. The European Union would provide data from European health cards, or at least avoid errors in the data supplied, while the remainder could be attributed to visitors who are not part of the EU.
Among the primary culprits are the nations whose travelers visit the Balearic Islands in largest numbers. The United Kingdom ranks first, followed by Germany, France, and Italy. In contrast, non-EU visitors who show the greatest reluctance to settle debts include the United States and Argentina.
The contract is projected to be worth 2,367,625 euros. Based on calculations by IB-Salut using real data and projections, it is estimated that from 2019 to 2022, the amount of uncollected invoices for care provided to both EU and non-EU tourists reached 7,398,831 euros over the four-year period.
a) In 2019, 2,379 invoices remained unpaid, totaling 1,787,997 euros. In 2020, the first pandemic year, uncollectible bills dropped to 887, a decline of about one third, totaling 1,353,551 euros.
Care improved, yet last year the count of unpaid invoices rose again to 1,749, with a total outstanding amount of 2,257,281 euros.
Servei de Salut projected caution, estimating that about 1,600 aid payments to foreigners could be halted, totaling around 2 million euros for this year, even as the archipelago anticipates record visitor numbers.
Officials explained that this mechanism would allow the issuance of invoices to tourists who lack standard data, providing at least a name, country of origin, or phone number to initiate the debt collection process.
The external contractor selected to manage the process will operate with a base bid of 1.43 million euros and could rise to 2.3 million euros if a twelve-month extension is executed. The firm would be responsible for locating community tourists, collecting their data, and sending it to the compensation fund.
The central government compensation fund aggregates all health care charges incurred by visitors from the European Union across the autonomous communities and seeks reimbursement from each member state.
Spaniards facing health issues abroad would encounter these claims once their home health systems stop paying. Likewise, non-EU tourists in default would be pursued individually by the contractor if there is no bilateral agreement between their country and Spain.
Servei de Salut estimates that uncollectible invoices would amount to nearly three million euros in unresolved funding.