The European Union is now taking a close look to the evolution of the medical tourism industry. In fact, MPs at the European Parliament considers the patient safety as part of their responsibilities, hence, on Tuesday 27 February, European Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou officially discussed new health strategy to counter balance the will of patients to fly out of Europe to find better medical services.

With regard to patient mobility, he said that his department was currently examining the responses to the consultation exercise on health services and that the Commission initiative was based on the need to consolidate legal security, following various Court judgments which stated that the rules of free movement also applied to health care.

The Commission discussed the possible creation of centres of excellence for the treatment of particular illnesses on the European Territory in order to propose specific answers to rare condition treatment seekers as well as to better the output and the productivity of certain medical centers. Specialisation of centers is indeed a productivist thinking yet it remains to be seen if this is the best solution available.

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Several MPs, like German Social Democrat Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, have called for the future regulation to cover issues such as: information for patients, the quality of care and providers, centres of excellence, compulsory exchange of experiences and directions on patient average waiting time before treatment (this being a touchy issue as waiting times vary from one illness to another)

Another intersting point was raised during this session by French (yes!) UMP MEP Françoise Grossetête. She warned of discrimination that could arise with mobility: in fact, people don’t all have the same access to information, nor the same ability to move to receive treatment or benefit from the services of a particular recognised professional. A possible answer to this concern is to institutionalize health information and officilaly sponsor mobility to guarentee better access to saefty. If medical tourism is not exactly the model promoted through these discussions, the European Union is now really seeing medical travel that could be a move against a system where insurance companies forced patients to go where treatment is cheapest.