NHS Patients to Get Free Healthcare Throughout Eu

NHS patients will be given the right to free treatment anywhere in the European Union under a new blueprint for cross-border healthcare.

The move, which covers all 27 countries in the EU, is designed to give patients greater freedom and ease congestion in health services with long waiting lists for operations.

The draft directive, approved by EU governments today, guarantees that treatment costs are covered by the national health scheme of the patient's home country.

It gives British patients the right to seek any treatment offered by the NHS, such as cancer care or heart surgery, in any other EU country that could provide it more quickly.

The plans would also make it easier for patients to receive medication prescribed abroad after they return home.

Patients will have to pay upfront for their treatment but as long as the cost was lower than in the NHS, they could will be able to reclaim the amount in full.

The Department of Health today reacted cautiously to the approval of the draft directive, which it said would be "subject to change" during negotiations.

The department insisted that the NHS would not fund "health tourism", by which it meant any treatment not currently provided by the British health service.

Any finally agreed directive would have to be acceptable to the UK and protect the NHS, said a spokesman.

He added: "The government is clear that health tourism will not be funded by the NHS. 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 traveling to the UK specifically for healthcare will have to pay the full NHS cost of treatment upfront.

"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."

The directive follows years of legal cases in which European court judges have ruled that freedom to cross EU borders for the best or quickest treatment should be a right for all.

Two years ago Briton Yvonne Watts won a landmark ruling that the NHS should reimburse her for the cost of a hip replacement operation she opted to have in France to avoid the long delays at home.

The safeguard to only reimburse patients with the cost of treatment in their home country is important for countries such as Britain, which are concerned that the new rules will open the floodgates for health tourism, leaving them to pay for expensive treatment abroad.

The directive also provides another safeguard in the event that the number of patients going abroad for treatment seriously disrupts the planning of operations in Britain or any other country. If a member state can provide evidence that this is happening then a system requiring patients to seek prior authorisation for treatment abroad could be brought in.

The European Commission said the plan "aims at clarifying and promoting the right of patients to gain access to healthcare in another EU country by ensuring, at the same time, high-quality and safe cross-border healthcare throughout Europe.

"Patients will be able to make an informed choice, in full confidence about the reimbursement that they are entitled to and about safety and quality of the care they will receive."