TK in Europe
The most important activities of TK concerning Europe are: the European Health Care Conference, the EU Cross-Border Care Studies and EU contracts.
The ongoing process of European integration is resulting in the heightened mobility of labour and an increase in travelling of the citizens - also in health care. The cross-border utilisation of the European health systems is of strategic importance for the continued development of the advantages offered by the single EU market. Techniker Krankenkasse has early started to consider increasing patient mobility in Europe and thus provided the insurants with the possibility of planned cross-border health care within an ordinance settlement before the rule was implemented into German law. TK has been using EU cross-border survey among its members, but also direct cross-country comparisons for a while now for the strategic development and for the health policy discussion.
European Health Conference formerly European Congress
The conference 2011 focussed in the cross-country comparison of the quality of health services. The Englisch "National Health Service" based on the Beveridge-model will be compared with the Bismarckian statutory health insurance in Germany. The object was to evaluate which new approaches for quality and efficiency improvements in financing and health service provision are valuable for the respective health care systems.
EU Cross-Border Care Study 2009
German patients are en route to Europe – to be more precise, to the European health care market. This is also true of TK insurants.
What makes German patients cross borders in order to receive planned medical treatment in other EU health care systems?
What distinguishes this group of patients?
And how many people actually opt to do this?
TK's Scientific Institute for Benefit and Efficiency in Health care Systems (Wissenschaftliches Institut der TK für Nutzen und Effizienz im Gesundheitswesen – WINEG) has looked into this and other questions in the present study.
Reasons for Planned EU Cross-Border Treatments
Cost savings
Combination of treatment and holiday
The present study has shown that the two key reasons for opting specifically for treatment in another European country are to save money and to combine treatment with a holiday. The latter reflects the trend towards health care tourism even among TK members. The vast majority of the members involved are senior members over the age of 60. In future, we would like to provide this group of members with an even greater level of professional advice on their way to the European health care market. This is why we are planning a further Europe Study which will concentrate on analysing the needs of these TK members and their experiences in other EU countries.
EU Contracts
Some aspects of cross-border medical care are still not sufficiently regulated for patients, such as the question of their rights in the event of their needing subsequent treatment or their receiving medical malpractice. The proposed directive by the European Commission on cross-border health care, on which the EU health ministers were unable to reach political agreement, would basically be a requisite European political milestone in strengthening patients' rights in the European health care market. However, the fact that people insured under the German statutory health insurance system are reimbursed the costs of receiving medical treatment in other EU countries based on statutory provisions has at least been embodied in German law since the 2004 Health Care Modernisation Act ("Gesundheitsmodernisierungsgesetz").
TK has started concluding direct selective contracts with service providers in other EU member countries for its insurants. The main motives for doing this are to spare insurants the bureaucratic burden of a protracted reimbursement procedure and to offer them high-quality treatment offering German-speaking personnel. Today, this TK Europe Service encompasses 88 contracted clinics in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Italy. In addition, there are 28 contracts with health and spa institutions in Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.