HEALTH commissioners in the region say they are willing to investigate claims that a North-East NHS hospital trust has been charging taxpayers for hundreds of private patients who have already paid for  treatment.

The claim was made by a former NHS official from South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Michelle Duke-Essex, who maintains her former employer regularly charged the NHS for treating private patients after they had already paid for their operations.

She believes up to 500 private patients a year have been processed in this way, costing the NHS more than £1m a year.

However, a spokeswoman for the South Tees Trust said they “strongly refute” the suggestion that 500 private patients have been incorrectly billed to NHS commissioners.

Mrs Duke-Essex was employed by the Middlesbrough trust’s finance department until last September.

She left after raising concerns with senior manager that public money was being wasted because of persistent ‘double-charging’.

During her time as an overseas visitors manager at the trust Mrs Duke-Essex, who lives in Middlesbrough , also claimed that some foreign patients who were ineligible for treatment on the NHS were having their bill paid by the British taxpayer.

J Meirion Thomas, a London-based NHS surgeon, said the issues raised by Ms Duke-Essex “require urgent investigation.”

He said the issue could be costing the taxpayer “hundreds of millions.”

A spokeswoman for the South Tees trust said : “There is a clear system in place which excludes private patients from any NHS payment systems.

"Private patients are entered onto the patient administration system with an identifier of ‘2’ – and are automatically excluded from the data transferred to our commissioners so could not be double billed.”

Around 1,000 patients treated at the trust every year and between April 2013 and December 2013 this generated £1.38m of income for the trust that was reinvested in NHS services, she added.

Chris Harrison, director of human resources at the South Tees Trust said Mrs Duke-Essex’s concerns about eligibility for treatment “were investigated and found to be groundless.”

A spokeswoman for NHS South Tees Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) said: patient data is validated against NHS records to ensure that patients are registered with CCG member practices.

“This data is flagged as NHS or private patient and the CCG has to rely on that flag as the private status of the patient is a matter between the patient and the foundation trust. The CCG has not investigated any double billing this year, but would seek to investigate any claim made.”