Luxembourg, 13/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - The Court of Justice has reached a verdict in the Keller case in which it guarantees that the sick can seek treatment in other Member States and get reimbursed insofar as the Member State where they were living can send them to a third country to get treated. Subsequently, the heirs of Ms Annette Keller will be able to demand their social security in Spain (where Ms Keller was a resident) to reimburse the medical costs she incurred in Switzerland or for the doctors in Cologne (where she was staying) and who sent her as an emergency case in 1994, for a malignant tumour in the nose and in her lower cranium, to a Zurich University clinic, which was the only chance, they believed, of treating her (Ms Keller died in 2001). The Court indicated that Insalud, the Spanish social security body, is linked via German medical assessments and German social security registration to the need to send Ms Keller to Switzerland. In this context, the court concludes that it has no importance which country the German doctors decides to transfer the patient to, even if it is not a member of the European Union.
Annette Keller went to Germany for a month on the E11 form, which enabled her to receive treatment in any European Union Member State and then with the E112 form, which allowed her to get hospital treatment in Germany (after having convinced Insalud that given her health, a transfer to Spain would not be recommended. Later, Insalud refused to reimburse the costs incurred in Switzerland, claiming “although the illness was serious, id did not have the character of a life-threatening emergency which justifies going outside the national and/or Community public health scheme in order to be treated in a private setting outside the Community, without allowing the Spanish management authority to examine and propose the corresponding care options appropriate to the condition from which the patient was suffering”.