Britain’s National Health Service will pay for patients to be treated abroad to help cut down long waiting lists. The policy shift was forced by a European Court of Justice ruling saying patients could seek treatment in other countries if they face “undue delay” at home.
Britain’s centre-left Labour government has been under pressure to cut waiting times since coming to power in 1997.
The government had originally rejected calls to use overseas hospitals to treat painful but not life-threatening illnesses, arguing its investment and reforms would reduce waiting times for operations to just seven weeks by 2005.
Critics said the turn of events was the result of the government’s failure to address the problems of the health service, adding that the ruling could send NHS cash out of the country, causing still more shortages in the health service and even leading to nurses and doctors being recruited by foreign hospitals to treat British patients.
Source: Reuters, Milburn Gives Green Light for NHS Treatment Overseas, and NHS Plans to Send Patients Abroad, August 26, 2001.
For text http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010826/80/c270h.html
For more on the NHS http://www.ncpa.org/pi/health/hedex10d.html
FMF\4 September 2001
