The Government interrupted its week-long celebration of the NHS yesterday to issue a sharp warning to anyone tempted to desert it. Rather than welcoming a new EU Directive that codifies the rights of patients to travel abroad for treatment, the Department of Health gruffly announced that “health tourism” would not be funded by the NHS.

This assertion missed the point so spectacularly that one wonders if anybody was awake in Richmond Terrace, the DoH's headquarters. The new directive - the result of several years of negotiation in which the Government has been fully involved - does not confer any new rights on EU citizens to become health tourists. Nor does it impose any new costs on health systems.

It simply says what is already EU law, though now codified in a far more comprehensive fashion. People have the right to travel and to have treatment abroad. If they do so, they will be reimbursed by the exact amount that their treatment would have cost in their home country.

Nobody stands to gain or lose. Suppose a British patient decides he wants his hip implant done in Spain. If the local cost exceeds the NHS price (£5,587 for a straightforward cemented implant) he will have to pay the difference. If the cost is less, then the operation will have cost the NHS less than if he had stayed in Britain for it, and he will have reduced the queue by one. What's to worry about?

Now let's imagine the reverse scenario. An EU national, attracted by the paeans lavished this week on the NHS, decides he would like to come here for the same operation. Unlikely, but bear with me. If the NHS cost is higher than the cost in his country of origin, he will have to fund the difference. If it is less, the NHS will be reimbursed its normal tariff cost. The NHS will have to find room for another patient, but it will have been fully reimbursed for treating him.

EU officials expect just one in 300 European patients to take advantage of the rules. The great majority will live on the mainland with attractive hospitals just over the border.

With a Channel to cross, the odds are that an even lower proportion of British patients will choose to travel. Anybody hoping to take advantage of a few weeks in a German spa - generously provided by the German healthcare system - will be disappointed. The NHS does not do spas. So it is not obliged to pay for anyone travelling to one. In any case, there is an opt-out clause. Should the numbers of British patients wanting to travel abroad become so large that they threaten the future of a service or a hospital here, they can be required to obtain a “prior authorisation” that would not in those circumstances be granted.

The new directive, it should be made clear, is distinct from the case law established by Yvonne Watts, who won the right to be reimbursed for having a hip operation in France when waiting lists in Britain were long. The judges at the European Court ruled that she was entitled to reimbursement if she had suffered undue delay in treatment.

Under the Watts ruling, full costs would be reimbursable, not just the NHS tariff cost. But now that maximum English waiting times for elective operations are down to six months, it is unlikely that anyone would qualify under the Watts criterion - and they would have to go to court to prove undue delay.

The directive seems unlikely to create a flood of patients in either direction. In any case, there is a safeguard. The department's anxiety appears misplaced.

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