More than 4,600 travelled abroad for health treatments last year

The most common countries people travel to are Northern Ireland, England and Germany. File picture: Pexels

More than 4,600 patients travelled abroad to get health treatment last year.

They were reimbursed by the HSE, who paid out nearly €15m in total.

The European Cross Border Healthcare Directive allows people to get healthcare in another EU or EEA member state.

The patient has to pay for the healthcare themselves, but they can then apply to the HSE to get reimbursed.

New figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show the HSE has paid out more than €40m under the scheme over the past three years.

Last year 4,614 patients got reimbursed a total of just under €15m.

The figure is more than €1.8m than the year before.

The most common countries people travel to are Northern Ireland, England and Germany.

And the most common specialities they travel for are orthopaedics, eye care and orthodontic treatment.

Health economist at UCC, Brian Turner, has said the scheme provides an advantage for patients.

“The people who would have travelled for cross border health care have probably been waiting in many cases quite a significant length of time, “ he said.

“So it provides a significant advantage to them in terms of being able to get the treatment in a more timely fashion.” 

Mr Turner added: “In terms of the money spent by the HSE, in context of the overall health budget this is relatively small. It’s less than one-thousandth of the health budget.” 

The directive began operating in Ireland in June 2014 and that year, there were just seven reimbursements, to the tune of €29,000.