The Patient as a Consumer in the EU: Legal Provisions and Their Implementation Based on the Examples of Poland and Italy

In this paper, we analyse the situation of the patients’ rights under the Polish and the Italian legislation, with a specific focus on the qualification of the patients in terms of consumers and of the healthcare facilities in terms of traders. We describe the different situations present in Poland and in Italy, in spite of the substantive harmonisation in the field of consumers’ protection at the European level. Nevertheless, the results of the analysis show that, even if healthcare treatments are left outside the scope of application of the consumers’ protection directives, including them would be far more advisable. This would also go in the same direction of the European rules in the field of cross-border mobility of patients and might contribute to the development of a common idea of trader which might include all the healthcare facilities. In fact, one of the findings of the article is the fact that many differences are still present in the domestic rules when it comes to the definition of the healthcare facility in term of trader and this is likely to prevent a consistent enactment of the regulations in the field.