Tag: health systems

Switching from hospital care to monitoring and treating patients in their homes will help make public health spending more cost-efficient, according to Edwin Kohl, chairman of healthcare lobby group Costeff.

Doctors and environmentalists believe the impact of climate change on public health has been largely ignored by policymakers as global leaders step up talks ahead of December's Copenhagen summit.

The European Parliament has passed a landmark directive which would allow Europeans seek healthcare abroad more easily and be reimbursed for the cost of doing so. However, EU member states are still working to iron out a range of practical difficulties before the plan can be formally adopted.

Despite some progress, EU health ministers meeting yesterday (16 December) in Brussels remained divided over a draft directive regarding the application of patients' rights to treatment in other member states.

A new campaign by the European Commission aims to reach out to citizens via a website which showcases the bloc's initiatives to improve health care across Europe.

A recent proposal to ease reimbursement of the health care European citizens receive while visiting other EU countries is just "the beginning of a long row," predicted a top Commission official as German diplomats warned they may challenge the legal basis of the draft directive. 

As the Commission readies to propose rules to improve cross-border access to health care in the EU, the 27 member states together with 26 other World Health Organization (WHO) European region countries have committed to more accountability regarding the way their health systems are financed.

Increased cross-border patient mobility has public finance implications but better co-ordination of national health policies and more co-operation at European level is expected to bring benefits both to patients and health systems. However, the directive on cross-border healthcare remains blocked at European Council level.

Member states will need to adapt their national health systems to prepare for the expected increase in long-term health services due to the EU's ageing demographics, according to a new study published by the Commission.

Doctors, patients and citizens alike are urging the Commission to come up with a promised directive on the provision of cross-border health services. They insist that official discussions on the proposal must begin, despite fears they could trigger major negative EU campaigning by some MEPs ahead of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

Technologies to deliver healthcare at home can ease the burden of chronic disease in an ageing Europe, but an integrated network enabling interconnection of different medical devices and linking patients to doctors and hospitals needs to be put in place first, argue public sector representatives. 

Establishing electronic health records and connecting the information with hospital and remote environments such as the physician's office and private homes should be the top priorities for improving the quality of healthcare over the next two years, according to senior healthcare professionals.

Nearly half (41%) of Brussels-based opinion leaders believe that member states may share a common healthcare system in the long-term.

"The core challenge in cross-broder access to health care is to ensure that political goals combine both the objectives of health-care systems and those of the internal market," the Commission has stated.

The EU executive has launched a public consultation on the future EU framework for health services, to know where greater legal certainty is needed and how to support co-operation between national health systems.

Germany's grand coalition has hammered out a reform of the country's underfunded health care system, which relies on a mixture of contribution raises and, for the first time, tax funding.

The first survey ever on citizens' perceptions and experiences of medical errors in the EU shows that nearly 80% of Europeans find medical errors an important problem in their country.

According to the Commission, the EU needs more co-ordination on health issues to bridge the broad health inequalities gaps across Europe and to fight against health risks such as pandemics.

The Commission proposal for the EU Health programme 2007-2013 aligns future health action with the overall EU objectives of prosperity, solidarity and security and aims to further exploit synergies with other policies.

In comparison with the Slovaks, Hungarians and Poles, the Czechs are the most positive about their health systems, a Central European Opinion Research Group study has shown.

In their contributions to the consultation on future EU health strategy, stakeholders have called for better co-ordination between public health and other policy areas, the need for more comparable data on the impact of investments in health and further debate on healthcare.

The differences in health status and systems between the EU-15 and the new Mediterranean members are small, whereas gaps are wider vis-à-vis the Central and Eastern European entrants, a study finds.