Doctors, nurses and NHS managers have condemned government plans to make hospital patients produce their passport before being treated as unworkable and a burden on overworked staff that will not raise the £500m a year ministers hope.



There are also fears that marginalised groups – such as people who are homeless and the 13% of the population who do not have a passport – will find it harder to access care if the policy, currently operating only at the Peterborough and Stamford hospitals NHS foundation trust, becomes commonplace.



Despite growing anxiety among NHS staff, the Department of Health said the policy – which its top mandarin admits is “controversial” – might still be rolled out nationally. It is keen for the NHS to increase dramatically the amount of money it recovers from people who are ineligible for free care from £73m in 2012-13 to its target of £500m a year.



Jon Restell, chief executive of Managers in Partnership, the union which represents health service managers, said: “Managers are worried about the unintended consequences for health inequalities, as marginalised groups may find it harder to access healthcare; for public health, where there are currently exemptions, for example around crisis mental health, TB and HIV. Will these continue?



“They are also worried about reciprocal arrangements with other countries. Is now the right time, at the start of Brexit negotiations, to be making these policy changes? What may be the impact on British citizens overseas?”



The likelihood that some patients would not have the two forms of identity envisaged by the Department of Health would create problems, Restell added.



“Who is accountable for the care of a patient who can’t show ID? What happens if their condition subsequently worsens, possibly foreseeably, as a result of being turned away?” he asked, adding: “ID checks are likely to create delays in clinics and elsewhere as ID is checked and queries resolved.”



Restell also said the scheme was overly bureaucratic: “Most elective work [non-urgent care in hospitals] comes via referral from general practice, where registration requires eligibility checks. Why create a second check?”



NHS managers doubt ID checks would generate any extra money beyond what is already received from overseas visitors and governments under existing arrangements.

“The system may well cost more to administer than the extra income it generates. Managers believe government underestimates how complicated this would be administratively. While we do not think it would necessarily burden clinical staff in practice, it would lead to delays and costs,” said Restell.



“The whole issue raises unresolved ethical questions about eligibility for healthcare and about compatibility with the values of the NHS and its staff.”



The annual income that Peterborough and Stamford trust received from chargeable patients rose from £92,500 to £250,000 after it introduced identity checks in May 2013. Its total budget is £261m. The trust says 95% of invoices were recouped last year, compared with 37% in 2012. NHS bosses told MPs this week that the scheme “had made a big difference”.



But the trust admitted that no formal evaluation of the scheme had been carried out, saying four staff awere employed on it, though they only spent a quarter of their time processing fees and pursuing unpaid bills. But the trust would not say how much the scheme costs, other than to say it did not outweigh the total income raised through charges.



Although some reports suggested passports would have to be shown to guarantee entitlement to free NHS treatment, they are not required in every case. Residents and EEA visitors who have lived in the UK for the past 12 months must provide two forms of ID such as a utility bill or payslip. If patients have not lived in the UK for the past 12 months, a passport or ID card is required.



Although the regulations enable an NHS trust to refuse treatment on the grounds that a patient requiring a non-urgent clinical intervention did not qualify for free treatment, Peterborough said it had never turned away a patient who said they were unable to pay.



Non-qualifying patients who do not pay invoices of more than £500 are reported to immigration and debt collectors are sometimes used.



Nurses said they were already too busy to help administer such a scheme and do not want to be distracted from looking after patients. Stephanie Aiken, the Royal College of Nursing’s deputy director of nursing, said: “Nurses and other staff on the frontline go to work to care for patients. While we recognise that the NHS is under extraordinary financial pressure, taking clinical staff away from the core job of treating patients is not the solution and must not be allowed to happen. Patient care must always be prioritised ahead of any administrative procedures.”

Sources at the NHS Confederation, which represents the NHS trusts who may have to implement the policy, said hospital bosses were “conscious of the practical and administrative burdens it would put on the NHS”.



A National Audit Office report last month estimated that hospitals are failing to collect about £200m from patients who should have paid for their treatment. But the chair of the British Medical Association, Dr Mark Porter, said: “We have got an NHS with a deficit approaching 100 times that amount opening up over the course of this parliament. This is little other than a pinprick on top of the actual problems facing the NHS.”



Charges only apply to non-urgent, planned care, not treatment in A&E. Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctors, warned against changing that demarcation.



He said: “We do not believe the proposed plans to require patients to show identification before receiving treatment could extend to the emergency department, due to their sheer impracticality. However, if the plans include the ED, then we would be failing our patients on an ethical level. The patient’s health is – and must always be – the most important thing, not where they are from.”

The Department of Health said: “The NHS is a national – not an international –health service and we are determined to stamp out abuse of the system to ensure it remains free at the point of need in this country.

“We consulted earlier this year on extending the charging of migrants and visitors using the NHS. We will set out further steps in due course to ensure we deliver on our objective to recover up to £500 million a year by the middle of this parliament.”