The interoperability of eHealth solutions should be achieved whilst respecting national regulations on the provision of healthcare services adopted in order to protect the patient, including legislation on Internet pharmacies, in particular national bans on mail order of prescription-only medicinal products to the extent that they are compatible with the case-law of the Court of Justice and Directive 97/7/EC of the European Parliam ...[+++]ent and of the Council of 20 May 1997 on the protection of consumers in respect of distance contracts and Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market

The interoperability of eHealth solutions should be achieved whilst respecting national regulations on the provision of healthcare services adopted in order to protect the patient, including legislation on Internet pharmacies, in particular national bans on mail order of prescription-only medicinal products to the extent that they are compatible with the case-law of the Court of Justice and Directive 97/7/EC of the European Parliam ...[+++]ent and of the Council of 20 May 1997 on the protection of consumers in respect of distance contracts and Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market .

whether there are common minimum rights or standards shared values and principles for health services on which citizens can rely throughout the EU; what practical issues need to be clarified for citizens who wish to seek healthcare in other Member States; what flexibility Member States have to regulate and plan their own systems without creating unjustified barriers to free movement; how to reconcile greater choice in exercising individual entitlements with financial sustainability of health systems overall; how to ensure proper compensation for cross-border healthcare provided ‘receiving’ countries; how ...[+++]patients or professionals can identify, compare or choose between providers in other countries; the link between health services and related services such as social services and long-term care; and what happens when patients need compensation where the healthcare provided has been harmful, which evidence suggests happens in around 10% of cases.

The proposal clarifies existing European Court of Justice case law, stipulating that for non-hospital services, patients must be reimbursed by their home Member State for health care elsewhere in the EU, to the extent and at the tariff that the services concerned would normally be reimbursed if administered in the home Member State.

It points out, next, that the system of prior authorisation which governs the reimbursement by the NHS of the cost of hospital treatment provided in another Member State deters or even prevents the patients concerned from applying to providers of hospital services established in another Member State and constitutes, both for those patients and for service providers, an obstacle to the freedom to provide services.

The Court considers that the arguments put forward before it do not show that removal of the requirement for prior authorisation for non-hospital care would give rise to patients travelling to other countries in such large numbers (despite linguistic barriers, geographic distance, the cost of staying abroad and lack of information about the kind of care) that the financial balance of the Netherlands social security system would be seriously upset and that the overall level of public-health protection would be jeopardised, something wh ...[+++]ich could constitute proper justification for a barrier to the fundamental principle of freedom to provide services.