6.9.2022
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 342/127 Wednesday 16 February 2022
the Social Security Regulation (64); calls for a reform of the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive, notably to allow for mobility and access to highly specialised equipment and care through the reinforcement of the national contact points by providing them with more budgetary resources, and to allow for the development of Commission guidelines setting acceptable and harmonised review and approval timelines to expedite time-to-treatment in the EU under the Social Security Regulation; calls for an increase in the number of information campaigns on patients’ rights to cross-border healthcare, including those aimed at health professionals, as well as the development of a one-stop-shop for information on the EU’s cross-border access pathways; emphasises the need to reduce logistic and linguistic barriers faced by patients when accessing healthcare in another EU Member State; stresses the need to provide patients with clear information on prior authorisation requirements that apply to certain Member States; underlines the need to provide particular financial support to low-income parents accompanying their child abroad for treatment; emphasises the need to facilitate the process through a holistic revision of the cross-border healthcare frameworks, giving equal weight to the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive and the Social Security Regulation, for patients who, in view of unmet needs and potential benefits, travel abroad for clinical trials and may face issues such as a lack of clarity on follow-up protocols after their return home and on coverage of costs related to their clinical trial participation by national insurance agencies; emphasises the need for clarification regarding access to cross-border clinical trials, as this is not clear in the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive; underlines that all costs related to a treatment should be financed before it begins to avoid the exclusion of low-income patients; calls on the Commission to consider, in the context of the next revision of the existing frameworks, the setting up of a single set of authorisation and reimbursement rules for the access to cross-border healthcare, including a right to a second opinion; calls on the Commission and the Member States to work together to conduct regular evaluations of the Commission’s eHealth strategy from 2018 to ensure interconnected electronic health records, better interoperability, and improved data quality, privacy and security for cancer patients at regional, national and EU level, while ensuring strict adherence to patient health data privacy and security rules; notes the potential of the Cancer Inequalities Registry as a means of reporting and measuring improvement in these areas;
63.
Notes the importance of rapidly administering treatment and providing the results of relevant medical exams to cancer patients in a timely fashion, since the more time this takes, the more the disease progresses, threatening the patient’s survival; regrets that in certain Member States, public resources are inadequate to guarantee timely detection and treatment, which leaves patients who depend on publicly provided social insurance with lower chances of survival, thus leaving them with no other option but the private sector;
64.
Calls for the mutual recognition of health-related qualifications in cancer care across the EU and a common recognition scheme for non-EU countries to be considered, as requested in Directive 2005/36/EC (65), ensuring that it is facilitative for oncology-related specialties; calls for the development of upskilling programmes to enable those wishing to move into oncology to do so at any point in their career;
65.
Calls for full recognition of medical oncology and paediatric oncology as specialist disciplines, the establishment of pan-European quality standards for administering and supervising medical treatments for cancer, both for adults and children, and the facilitation of patient access to cancer specialists so that they may benefit from innovations and access to early clinical trials on new promising drugs, health technologies and reference centres for complex treatments like cell and gene therapy; highlights the need to ensure that access to innovation in early clinical trials for relapsed or difficult-to-treat malignancies is covered by the relevant provisions;
66.
Calls for surgical skills in the EU to be strengthened via the recognition of surgical oncology as a specialist discipline, the establishment of pan-European quality standards for cancer surgery, the facilitation of patients’ access to ‘high-volume’ centres for cancer surgery and access to innovative surgical procedures; calls for the recognition of high-quality surgery and
(64) (65)
Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the coordination of social security systems (OJ L 166, 30.4.2004, p. 1).
Directive 2005/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on the recognition of professional qualifications (OJ L 255, 30.9.2005, p. 22).