BACKGROUND The idea for this survey emanated from desk research and two meetings for researchers that discussed medical tourism and out-of-country health care, which were convened by some of the authors of this article (VR, CP and RL). METHODS A Cross Border Health Care Survey was drafted by a number of the authors and administered to Canadian physicians via the Canadian Medical Association's...

There are many issues of concern regarding the legal and ethical aspects of telemedicine. These include the responsibilities and potential liabilities of the health professional, the duty to maintain the confidentiality and privacy of patient records, and the jurisdictional problems associated with cross-border consultations. There is also the issue of reimbursement for care provided using a te...

In the European Union a growing number of citizens are receiving medical treatment in a country other than the one in which they are resident. This concerns migrant (frontier) workers, emergency treatment and preauthorized care. Since 1998 a 'new category' can be discerned of persons going abroad without prior authorization on the basis of the Decker and Kohll rulings of the EC Court of Justice...

Citizens are increasingly crossing borders within the European Union (EU). Europeans have always been free to travel to receive care abroad, but if they wished to benefit from their statutory social protection scheme, they were subject to their local or national legislation on social protection. This changed in 1991 with the European Court of Justice defining healthcare as a service, starting a...

BACKGROUND Cross-border reproductive care indicates the cross-border movements made by patients to obtain infertility treatment they cannot obtain at home. The problem at present is that empirical data on the extent of the phenomenon are lacking. This article presents the data on infertility patients going to Belgium for treatment. METHODS A survey was conducted among the centres for reproduc...

background in recent years, accreditation of private hospitals followed by decentralisation of the italian national health service (nhs) into 21 regional health systems has provided a good empirical ground for investigating the tiebout principle of “voting with their feet”. we examine the infra-regional trade-off between greater patient choice (due to an increase in hospital services supply) an...

This article discusses the guarantee of the right to health care and the exercise of citizenship in border areas between Brazil and the other MERCOSUR member countries, considering cross-border movement of persons and the demand on the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) by the population living along the borders. The goal is to debate the guarantee of the right to health, citizenship, free ...

Outlawing well established forms of assisted reproduction places obstacles in the path of couples who wish to attain their reproductive goals with medical assistance. One effect of restrictive reproductive laws that has received widespread attention is cross-border reproductive travel. In Europe, such travel is permitted by the policy of free movement of persons that is a cornerstone of the dem...