Public or private? New ruling on hospital charges for insured patients

Main thrust of eight declarations made by judge has to do with when and how a privately insured patient should be dealt with for the purposes of being treated privately or publicly

Once a patient opts to be treated as a private patient, the hospital can charge the real cost of a bed whether it is in a communal 'multi-occupancy' ward or a private room. Picture: iStock

Privately insured patients going into public hospitals will now know under what terms their insurers will or will not have to pay for their accommodation, following the making of eight formal declarations by the High Court.

In a judgment just published, the court outlined the exact terms of a decision it made last year in which it found the HSE can not make patients liable to pay private accommodation costs before they state whether they wish to be treated as private or public patients.