EU Directive on cross-border healthcare

On February 28th 2011 at Brussels, the EU Council approved the European Parliament’s amendments on a draft directive regarding to assuring a high quality cross-border healthcare and a better cooperation between member states, being clarity pointed the rights of patients looking to healthcare in other member state.
As EU Pressroom informs, few of the most relevant aspects of the directive contains the following:

• As a general rule, patients will be allowed to receive healthcare in another member state and be reimbursed up to the level of costs that would have been assumed by the member state of affiliation, if this healthcare had been provided on its territory;
• Instead of reimbursing the patient, member states of affiliation may also decide to pay the healthcare provider directly;
• The recognition of prescriptions issued in another member state has been improved; as a general rule, if a product is authorised to be marketed on its territory, a member state must ensure that prescriptions issued for such a product in another member state can be dispensed in its territory in compliance with its national legislation;
• Cooperation between member states in the field of healthcare has been strengthened, for example, in the field of e-health and through the development of a European network which will bring together, on a voluntary basis, the national authorities responsible for e-health; another example is rare diseases, where the Commission will have to support member states in cooperating in the field of diagnosis and treatment capacity;
• Member states will have to establish national contact points that must provide patients with information about their rights and entitlements and practical aspects of receiving cross border healthcare, e.g. information about healthcare providers, quality and safety, accessibility of hospitals for persons with disabilities, to enable patients to make an informed choice.

Notice: The member states will have 30 months to transpose the directive into national legislation. The Austrian, Polish, Portuguese and Romanian delegations voted against and the Slovak delegation abstained.

NB: This summary is only for information and is not designed to interpret or replace the reference document, which remains the only binding legal text.

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