Today’s Consell de Govern, to be held on Ibiza, plans to authorize the Health Department to hire an external company to collect the unpaid invoices of tourists treated in the island’s hospitals or health centers after having suffered an accident or illness during their holiday stay in the archipelago.
80% of the unpaid invoices correspond to citizens residing in the EU who have not provided the information or have provided incorrect information on their European health card, while the rest are attributable to visitors from outside the EU.
Among the former, the nationalities who default the most, which logically correspond to the largest number of tourists from these countries visiting the Balearic Islands, are the United Kingdom, followed by Germany, France and Italy. On the other hand, the visitors from outside the EU most reluctant to pay their debts are the United States and Argentina.
The estimated value of this contracting amounts to 2,367,625 euros. Although some calculations made by the IB-Salut with real data and a projection, that of this year 2022, estimates the invoices issued and not collected for assistance to EU and non-EU tourists in the four-year period 2019 – 2022 amounts to 7,398,831 euros .
2,379 unpaid invoices
Thus, in 2019, 2,379 invoices were uncollected with a value of €1,787,997; in 2020, the first pandemic year, uncollected invoices dropped to 887, almost a third, and amounted to €1,353,551.
The pandemic health situation improved and last year the number of unpaid invoices doubled (1,749) with a total of 2,257,281 euros uncollected.
And already for this year in which all records for tourist arrivals to this archipelago are expected to be beaten, the Servei de Salut has been extremely conservative in predicting that only 1,600 services to foreigners will not be collected for a total amount of 2 million euros.
The island’s Servei de Salut explained that in this way they will be able to release the invoices to those tourists of whom they lack data as they would only have provided their name, the country from which they came or their telephone number.
Health services invoicing fell 56.5% in 2020 and 30.5% in 2021, during the pandemic years
The invoicing for assistance to foreign tourists has logically fallen in the last two years in which the covid-19 pandemic limited the arrival of visitors to this archipelago.
Thus, in the first year of restrictions on mobility for health reasons, turnover fell by 56.5% from 33.4 million in 2019 to 14.5 million in 2020.
Last year, the main economic activity of this community partly recovered and the drop in turnover was smaller, 30.5%. In 2021 the turnover was 23.2 million euros, a considerable amount in a very difficult situation.
Regarding the nationalities of the tourists treated in the island’s public health system, in the pre-pandemic year the figures show around 19.513 British citizens were attended to, for a total of 11.4 million euros, while in the following two years, 6,480 and 5,060 British citizens were attended to, respectively, for a total of 3.6 and 4.4 million euros.
The compensation fund
The return of German tourists to their preferred tourist destination has been more dramatic. In the pre-pandemic year 15,372 Germans were assisted and were invoiced for just over 9 million euros, in 2020 the number of German tourists assisted dropped to 6,090 and were charged 4.2 million.
But last year the desire to return to the sun of Mallorca generated 9,545 assisted Germans, with a growth of over 50%. The Servei de Salut invoiced them 7.7 million, already close to the usual amount before the health crisis (9 million in 2019).
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.