| Verified against primary record | |
| Prior authorisation requests (2023) | 55 received, 28 authorised, 13 refused[1] |
|---|---|
| Reimbursement requests (2023) | 3,189 received, 2,843 granted, 155 refused[1] |
| Amount reimbursed, authorised care (2023) | EUR 27,694[1] |
| National contact point | Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia[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 Slovenian insured persons for care obtained abroad and are not a count of foreign patients treated in Slovenia. The authorised and refused figures account for only 41 of the 55 requests received, because the Commission records that requests may be decided in a later year than the one in which they arrive. No typical cost range is given because no official Slovenian source publishes prices paid by foreign patients. | |
Medical tourism in Slovenia shows an unusually heavy use of cross-border reimbursement relative to the country’s size, alongside one of the lowest authorisation approval rates reported anywhere in the collection. Slovenia processed 3,189 reimbursement requests in reference year 2023 for a population of around two million, while authorising only 28 of 55 requests for prior authorisation.
High volume, low approval
For reference year 2023 Slovenia recorded 55 requests for prior authorisation, of which 28 were authorised and 13 refused, with 27,694 euro reimbursed for authorised care. On the unauthorised route it received 3,189 reimbursement requests, granted 2,843 and refused 155.[1]
The authorisation figures are striking in two ways. The approval share, 28 of 55 requests received, is about 51 per cent, far below the Union-wide figure of roughly 81 per cent for authorisation requests and far below neighbouring Slovakia’s 97 per cent. And the authorised and refused counts together account for only 41 of the 55 requests, the remaining 14 presumably falling to be decided in a later year, which the Commission identifies as a general feature of these tables.[1]
On the reimbursement side the pattern is the opposite: 2,843 of 3,189 requests granted, about 89 per cent, with only 155 refused. A system that approves routine reimbursement readily while turning down about half of authorisation applications is drawing a sharp line between the two routes.[1]
Relative to population, 3,189 claims is among the highest rates of Directive use in the Union. Slovenia borders Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, and the Commission records that patient mobility mostly involves neighbouring countries, which is the likeliest explanation for a small state generating a large claim volume.[1]
The framework
Slovenia’s designated national contact point for cross-border healthcare is the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia, the body that also administers the statutory health insurance scheme.[2]
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. Refusal on any other basis is not permitted by the Directive.[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 Slovenia 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 spending at roughly 0.004 per cent of the Union’s healthcare budget and prior authorisation applying in around 1 per cent of cases.[3]
Limits of the evidence
These figures describe Slovenian patients obtaining care abroad, not foreign patients treated in Slovenia, for which no official Slovenian count was located. The approval share quoted here is calculated against requests received in the same year, which the Commission’s own caveat shows is not a clean basis, so it indicates a pattern rather than a rate. No reason for the low authorisation approval share is given in the source, and none is inferred here. Privately funded treatment of foreign patients appears in none of these sources.
See also
- Medical tourism in Slovakia, whose authorisation approval rate is at the opposite extreme
- Cross-border healthcare for border communities, the likeliest driver of Slovenia’s claim volume
- Medical tourism in Italy, one of Slovenia’s four neighbours
- Government-funded treatment abroad, the category these claims fall into
- Cross-border healthcare, and the distinction between the two routes
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 Slovenian rows for prior authorisation and reimbursement and the amount reimbursed, the Union-wide authorisation and reimbursement grant rates used for comparison, the Slovak comparator, the statement that mobility mostly involves neighbouring countries, 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 Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia as the national contact point was read directly. 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 shares of citizens and of healthcare spending, 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 approval share is presented as an indication rather than a rate, because the Commission’s caveat that decisions may fall in a later year means the within-year denominator is unreliable, and 14 of Slovenia’s 55 requests are unaccounted for on that basis. No explanation for the low approval share is offered, because the source gives none. No official Slovenian count of foreign patients treated in Slovenia was located, and no figure has been estimated.