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Govt downplays health tourism plans

03/07/2008

The government is committed to providing care close to patients' homes and will not fund health tourism, the Department of Health (DoH) has said.

Its comments follow proposals from the European Commission (EC) to make it easier for patients to go to other European Union countries for treatment and be reimbursed by their home country up to the cost of what they would have received at home.

A proposed EC directive would make it clearer for patients how they can seek healthcare abroad and aims to encourage European cooperation on healthcare.

The directive must be adopted by the Council of Ministers for the Commission and the European Parliament before it becomes law.

The EC says the directive "provides a solid basis to unlock the huge potential for European cooperation to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of all EU health systems".

It follows judgements by the European Court of Justice in a number of cases concerning the mobility of individual patients from different Member States.

European health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said: "This proposal aims to clarify how patients can exercise their rights to cross-border health care, while at the same time providing legal certainty for Member States and health care providers.

"It ensures that the quality and safety of health care will be guaranteed throughout the Union, and promotes cooperation between health systems to provide better access to specialised care."

A DoH spokesperson said the government will examine the proposals carefully and work closely with the EC to agree a directive that is "acceptable to the UK and protects the NHS".

"The government is clear that health tourism will not be funded by the NHS," they added.

"We are also absolutely committed to ensuring that, where UK patients choose to travel abroad for care, the NHS retains the ability to decide what care it will fund. Equally, anyone from other Member States travelling to the UK specifically for healthcare will have to pay the full NHS cost of treatment upfront."

The spokesperson continued: "The priority for the vast majority of NHS patients is high quality healthcare received close to their homes, and we remain committed to providing this. Currently, where patients do choose to travel abroad for care, overwhelmingly this tends to be for care the NHS would not have funded anyway, for example, cosmetic surgery.

"Case law exists already from the European Court of Justice allowing patients who wish to receive care abroad to do so. But very few people choose to do this, and there has been no significant recent increase in numbers in recent years."