| Verified against primary record | |
| Prior authorisation requests (2023) | 2 received, 0 authorised, 2 refused[1] |
|---|---|
| Reimbursement requests (2023) | 1,168 received, 936 granted, 38 refused[1] |
| Measures limiting patient inflow | In place; one of only two reporting states, with zero cases reported for 2023[1] |
| Authorisation time limit | Five days, the shortest in the report[1] |
| National contact point | Ministry for Health[2] |
| Independently reported | |
| EU patients using the Directive each year | About 200,000, under 0.05 per cent of EU citizens[3] |
| Bands apply only to the rows beneath them. All counts are claims by Romanian insured persons for care obtained abroad and are not a count of foreign patients treated in Romania. The authorised and refused figures account for only 974 of the 1,168 reimbursement requests received, because the Commission records that requests may be decided in a later year. No typical cost range is given because no official Romanian source publishes prices paid by foreign patients. | |
Medical tourism in Romania is distinguished in the European data by two administrative facts rather than by its volumes. Romania is one of only two reporting states recorded as having measures in place to limit the inflow of patients from other member states, a power the Directive permits on planning grounds, and it operates the shortest authorisation deadline in the collection at five days. For reference year 2023 it reported 1,168 reimbursement requests and just two requests for prior authorisation, both refused.
A state that limits inflow
The Commission records Romania as one of two countries with measures to limit patient inflow, while noting that zero cases were reported under those measures for 2023.[1]
This is worth separating from the usual framing of medical tourism as something states compete for. Under the Directive a member state receiving patients may restrict access for overriding reasons of general interest connected to planning, in order to protect capacity for its own population. Romania has such measures on the books. That they produced no cases in 2023 suggests a reserve power rather than an operating restriction.[1]
Romania’s authorisation time limit of five days is the shortest reported anywhere in the collection, against limits of 30 days in Poland and 45 days in Spain. With only two authorisation requests received in the year, both refused, the short deadline governs almost nothing in practice.[1]
The reported volumes
Romania received 1,168 reimbursement requests for care not subject to prior authorisation in reference year 2023, granting 936 and refusing 38. The two figures together account for 974 of the requests received, the remainder presumably falling to be decided in a later year, which the Commission identifies as a general feature of these tables.[1]
On the authorisation route it received two requests, authorised none and refused both. No amount reimbursed for authorised care appears for Romania in the report’s table of amounts.[1]
Romania’s designated national contact point for cross-border healthcare is the Ministry for Health itself, rather than an insurance fund or a separate agency as in most member states.[2]
The framework
Under Directive 2011/24/EU the member state of affiliation must reimburse cross-border care where the treatment is among the benefits it covers domestically, capped at the level of costs it would have assumed and not exceeding the actual cost received. Prior authorisation may be required only for care subject to planning requirements involving an overnight hospital stay or highly specialised and cost-intensive infrastructure, for treatments carrying a particular risk, and for providers raising serious quality or safety concerns.[5]
Eurostat separately maintains a collection of hospital discharges of non-residents, with tables for in-patients, day cases, bed days and average length of stay, reporting country of residence where member states can supply it. Individual cell values for Romania were not retrievable for this article.[4]
For scale, the European Court of Auditors estimated about 200,000 patients a year using the Directive across the Union, fewer than 0.05 per cent of EU citizens, with prior authorisation applying in around 1 per cent of cases.[3]
Limits of the evidence
These figures describe Romanian patients obtaining care abroad, not foreign patients treated in Romania, for which no official Romanian count was located. The nature of the inflow-limiting measures is not described in the source beyond their existence, so nothing is asserted here about what they consist of or which services they touch. Romania’s private dental and cosmetic sectors, promoted commercially to patients from western Europe, appear in none of these sources and no figure for them has been estimated.
See also
- Medical tourism and health system capacity, the concern behind inflow-limiting measures
- Medical tourism and local access to care, the interest such measures protect
- Medical tourism in Portugal, which writes a similar safeguard into statute
- Dental tourism, a privately funded flow absent from these figures
- Cross-border healthcare, the framework producing the Romanian figures
References
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety. Data on cross-border patient healthcare following Directive 2011/24/EU, reference year 2023. 15 May 2025. Verified against primary record: the report was opened and the Romanian rows for prior authorisation and reimbursement, the record that Romania is one of two countries with measures to limit patient inflow with zero cases reported for 2023, the five-day authorisation time limit as the shortest in the report, the Polish and Spanish comparator limits, the absence of a Romanian entry in the table of amounts reimbursed, and the caveat that requests may be decided in a later year were read directly. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- United Kingdom government publishing service. EEA countries and contact points. Verified against primary record: the list was opened and the designation of the Ministry for Health as Romania’s national contact point was read directly, together with the different bodies designated by other member states. The document does not state a publication date, which is recorded here as a limitation. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- European Court of Auditors. Special Report 07/2019: EU actions for cross-border healthcare. 2019. Verified against primary record: the report was opened and the annual patient estimate, the share of citizens and the share of cases requiring prior authorisation were read. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- Eurostat. Hospital discharges and length of stay for inpatient and curative care (hlth_hosd), reference metadata. Last updated 15 December 2025. Verified against primary record: the metadata page was opened and the non-resident definition, the statement that country of residence is reported, and the list of non-resident tables were read. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- European Parliament and Council. Directive 2011/24/EU, Chapter III, Articles 7 and 8. 9 March 2011. Verified against primary record: the chapter text was opened and the reimbursement rule in Article 7 and the three permitted grounds for prior authorisation in Article 8(2) were read. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
Sourcing note: this entry uses only official sources. The existence of Romanian measures limiting patient inflow is reported as the Commission records it, without any claim about their content, because the source describes only that they exist and produced no cases. No official Romanian count of foreign patients treated in Romania was located, and no figure has been estimated for privately funded treatment.