Health care accessibility across borders
To meet the demands of and increase in patients seeking health care in European countries other than their own, national health services can no longer be considered to operate in isolation from other EU Member States. One of the issues that this phenomenon brings to the fore is the financial viability of national health systems — a point Member States widely agree should not come under threat because of patient mobility. To protect the 'financial balance' of individual countries’ health systems, accurate information is needed regarding the services offered, how they are defined, their frequency of use, what their costs are and what prices are being paid for them. Gathering such information will facilitate policymaking for better management of patient movements to both uphold existing systems and maintain the treasured principles of equity, universality and accessibility. Patients themselves also stand to gain from such knowledge. Given these considerations and needs, the 'Health benefits and service costs in Europe' (Healthbasket) project was funded by the EU to investigate both policy and methodological challenges. To address these needs, project partners focused on the basket of services, and reviewed and developed methodologies for assessing costs and prices across EU Member States. Healthbasket succeeded in providing a comprehensive analysis of the benefits baskets and catalogues in nine European countries chosen as representative of Europe’s various health care systems. Country studies revealed that information on the topic is highly fragmented and non-systematic, and therefore often difficult to access. To overcome this, a common framework and terminology were used to gather pertinent information for meaningful comparisons. A comparative analysis of health benefits in the participant countries revealed a number of interesting differences with implications for meeting the future challenges of healthcare in an integrated Europe. Project efforts therefore established a base for examining the finer details of benefits, services and costs in different national health systems. Developments in this area promise to improve patient flows across Europe, with advantages for patients as well as their origin and host countries.
