Trend Report Reference years 2021 – 2023: Member State data on cross-border patient healthcare following Directive 2011/24/EU

The cross-border health care directive (Directive 2011/24/EC) requires the Commission to periodically report on the operation of the Directive to the European Parliament and to the Council. The data used to analyse the operation of the Directive is collected yearly through the National Contact Points (NCPs) of EU and EEA countries. This report presents the data collected for the reference period 2021 - 2023.  

The report highlights 

• 11 981 requests for healthcare subject to prior authorisation were received. 83.7% of the requests were authorised, while 19.4% were refused.
• 1 386 735 requests for healthcare not subject to prior authorisation were received. 76.8% of requests were granted, while 16.2% were refused.
• EUR 465 172 680 was spent on cross-border healthcare, of those, EUR 18 380 839 was spent on Healthcare Subject to Prior Authorisation and EUR 446 791 841 on Healthcare Not Subject to Prior Authorisation.
• The overall expenditure on cross-border healthcare has reached EUR 824 033 523.
• Considering only the countries that provided a complete set of data for all the three years covered, it can be observed that the total cross-border healthcare expenditure (EUR 463 million) represents less than the 0.02% of their total health expenditure (EUR 3 313 360 900 000 – more than 3 trillion Euro).