Payment for copies of baby scans at St George’s – media coverage today (28 October, 2017)

There are reports in the media today about the alleged misuse of monies collected from pregnant women and/or their partners paying for printed copies of baby scans at St George’s Hospital (Tooting).

In light of these reports, we would like to make the following points clear:

• All baby scans for pregnant women are provided free of charge at St George’s as part of their maternity care, and always have been.
• Like many other NHS hospitals, however, we charge a small fee of £3 for women and their partners who want printed copies of their baby scans
• We regret to confirm that two separate investigations have shown that our systems and processes for collecting and handling money from baby scans were not robust, and fell well short of the high and scrupulous standards we expect. We would like to stress, however, than no evidence of fraud has been established.
• We have now put effective systems in place, and can confirm that all monies received for paper copies of baby scans go into a central account, with payments made electronically. Cash payments are no longer accepted.

All monies raised from baby scans are used for the sole purpose of delivering and improving care for women using the service at St George’s. We would like to apologise for any distress or confusion caused.

Finally, we would like to reassure pregnant women visiting the fetal medicine service at St George’s that no concerns whatsoever have been raised about the standard of patient care we provide.

Women using the service will continue to receive a high standard of care as they do currently.