engleski

Implementation of the patients’ rights directive in England and Ireland: more convergence of social health care systems in the EU?

The role of the European Union has been steadily increasing in the area of cross-border health care, namely occurrences of patients receiving health care in other Member States, outside of their country of social health protection. These developments have reached an important milestone with the adoption of the secondary EU legislation regulating the issue (Patients’ Rights Directive) the transposition period of which ended on 25 October 2013. Some of the countries where the Directive has been transposed are England (UK) and Ireland, although the latter failed to meet the transposition deadline by several months. The aim of the paper is to analyse the transposition of the Patients’ Rights Directive in England and Ireland, to determine whether the Directive may result in some level of convergence of these Member States’ social health care systems and present some possible trends in the years to come. The analysis shows that variations between the national social health systems are still significant, with the Directive representing a limited tool of overcoming the said differences.

HSE ; NHS ; Patients’ Rights Directive ; transposition

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