Introduction: The main purpose of this abstract is to raise awareness of the unsatisfactory legal situation with regard to integrated care. The abstract focuses on two major legal issues. First, I picture the actual legal situation regarding cross-border healthcare. Secondly, I describe the duties care providers and patients may face when entering into integrated care programs. Cross-border hea...

When I visit my dentist I travel 4 kilometres from my residence to her office. My experience is commonplace; many Canadians commute from their homes or workplaces to see a nearby dentist. Although our coffee might come from Colombia and our clothes from China, for most of us dental care is as local as the neighbourhood grocery store, library or community centre. However, for some people, obtain...

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...

This article presents the results of a pioneering effort by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to measure interstate border crossing for services used by Medicare and non-Medicare beneficiaries. A major focus is to provide estimates of per capita expenditures by State for individual services. Such estimates are not possible without adjustment for interstate border-crossing flows. T...

This paper compares two populations with respect to attitudes toward the regulation of reproductive care by the European Union. The two populations are 252 individuals who crossed a national border to receive treatment at an independent clinic in Spain and 45 Spanish citizens who received treatment in their home country. Online surveys were sent to former patients (from many different countries...

Aims: Flexibility and conformability are key performance characteristics in dressing design and construction, which can have an impact on product suitability in the clinical environment. This study evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively the conformability and comfort of a variety of wound dressings (Biatain® Soft/Ag/Non-adhesive (Coloplast), Allevyn® Gentle (Smith and Nephew), Mepilex®...

The revolution started without anybody realising it. The finding, by the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court), that two Italian nationals, Mrs Luisi and Mr Carbone, were entitled to travel to another member state to receive health services – unrestrained by capital movement or other restrictions – hardly alarmed people in the health sector: Luisi and Carbone were over-the-border s...

BACKGROUND Anecdotal evidence suggests that many organised initiatives for cross-border collaboration in healthcare in border regions originate from the need for women to give birth close to home. Despite this, there is remarkably little research on these practices and the specific modes of collaboration between providers and experiences and needs of these women. In this paper we describe the e...

The World Health Organization (WHO) European region estimates that more than 400,000 tuberculosis (TB) cases occur in Europe, a large proportion of them among migrants. A coordinated public health mechanism to guarantee TB prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care across borders is not in place. A consensus paper describing the minimum package of cross-border TB control and care was prepared by...