Patients’ foreign treatment costs €21m

The State has spent more than €21m on applications from patients to be treated abroad in the past three years, according to figures released by the HSE.

Data released under Freedom of Information shows that while the number of applications received and approved for the Treatment Abroad Scheme (TAS) has fallen consecutively over the past three years, the amount of money spent on those procedures increased in 2014.

The figures also show the vast majority of applications are approved and most come from the Dublin area.

In total some €21,231,019 was spent on TAS between 2012 and 2014. During that period 2,2425 applications were received and 2,077 were approved, with just 104 rejected and the remainder still under consideration by the end of last year.

Last year 743 applications were received and 587 applications were approved, both lower figures than in either of the previous two years, but the amount spent on the procedures involved increased to €8.23m, almost €2m more than in 2013.

The HSE said the most expensive treatments covered by the TAS are organ transplantation procedures, which would also come within the most popular treatments sought, alongside deep brain stimulation and radiotherapies/radio surgeries.

The most prominent locations where the procedures take place are Britain, Sweden and then Germany.

According to the figures released by the HSE, the highest number of applications each year come from the Dublin area, with 265 applications from residents of the capital approved in 2012, 216 granted in 2013 and 218 granted last year.

The area with the second highest number of applications is Cork/Kerry.

The TAS only applies to procedures available in the EU and for which there are no readily available options in Ireland.

The HSE is likely to face further costs after it emerged that Irish patients can now travel for healthcare to other EU countries as part of an EU-wide directive.

It emerged at the weekend that some people have already travelled overseas to avail of treatments elsewhere under the new patient rights, which came into law at the end of February.

Unlike with the TAS or the European Health Insurance Card, patients can avail of healthcare procedures that are available here elsewhere, including across the border in the North.

As reported by the Sunday Business Post, referral for care under the Cross Border Directive can be made by a GP, a hospital consultant and certain other HSE clinicians, with the out-of-state clinician to be identified by the patient and the referring doctor.

The HSE cannot reject applicants and reimburses the cost up to the same level that would have been accrued had the procedure been carried out here.

Patients do not have to be on a waiting list for a procedure here to apply to have it carried out overseas and it is understood that a number of Irish people have already utilised the scheme to have scans conducted across the border.