“Patients mobility” is a well-known and widespread phenomenon of increasingly importance both in Europe and worldwide. In Europe it has been regulated since the Seventies to allow people temporarily abroad to get treatments to be funded by their home healthcare systems (Legido-Quigley et al, 2007). Later, in the Nineties the European Court of Justice expanded the possibility for citizens to receive needed treatments in member states, even without authorization from the home country and quite recently the Directive 2011/24/EU allows European citizens the right to choose among health care providers across all member states (Brekke et al, 2014). Similarly, in the US citizens travel to get access to higher quality treatments (Laugesen & Vargas-Bustamente, 2010). Even within single countries there may be patients mobility. This happens wherever the national health system is organized on regional basis and there are “patient choice” policies in place so that a single citizen can choose where to receive the treatment freely. Italy perfectly fits such model and several studies have been conducted on Italian data (i.e. Agenas, 2012). Patient mobility has been widely studied both by scholars of Economics and Healthcare: the formers are interested mainly in understanding reasons and economic consequences of citizens’ search for healthcare services in different places from where they live (Glinos et al, 2012; Levaggi & Zanola, 2004; Cantarero, 2006; Glinos et al, 2010). As a matter of fact, mobility generates a flux of resources moving in the opposite direction of patients in order to reimburse the organizations providing the treatments for non-residents. […]
Key-Words: Aziende sanitarie
