Guidelines on EU Emergency Assistance in Cross-Border Cooperation in Healthcare related to the COVID-19 crisis

1. Objective and Scope

The COVID-19 pandemic has already placed great stress on healthcare systems in a number of EU Member States. Many fear that their available intensive care places will not be sufficient.

Health professionals are overworked and workforce shortages are growing acute in many healthcare facilities. A number of countries are calling for emergency assistance from the EU and other EU Member States. This call for support has been already answered by some. Recent regional initiatives of hospital cooperation to treat COVID-19 patients – several German Länder and Luxembourg offering intensive care places and hospital treatment to Italian and French patients – are saving lives and help alleviate the capacities of health systems under stress by providing intensive care places. This is an encouraging and important signal of European solidarity. Since exceptional emergency situations exist a more coordinated approach in crossborder healthcare1 is justified.

The European Commission calls on national, regional and local health authorities to make full use of:

• existing structures and mechanisms to work together to assist patients in need of critical care by offering available hospital bed capacity, and - available health professionals who constitute the backbone of our health systems and to enable them to share expertise and skills working hand in hand with health professionals across borders.

so as to alleviate overstretched healthcare facilities in Member States in need and where it does not put the functioning of their own health systems at risk.

The European Commission is fully committed to assisting health authorities by:

• coordinating requested and offered intensive care places for patients and appropriately qualified medical personnel through the Health Security Committee and the Early Warning and Response System (EWRS);

• coordinating and co-funding the emergency transport of patients and appropriately qualified teams of medical personnel across borders when Member States request assistance through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism;

• providing clarity on the reimbursement of healthcare costs for treatment in another Member State in line with the Social Security Coordination Regulations;

• providing clarity on arrangements for patient mobility across borders: transfer of patient records, continuity of care and the mutual recognition of prescriptions in line with the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive;

• encouraging local, regional and national health authorities to use, where existing, bilateral and regional agreements and contact points to relieve the burden of critical care units treating COVID-19 patients in the neighbouring region;

• encouraging Member States or specialist non-governmental organisations to send appropriately qualified teams of medical personnel across borders.