Primary care, including general practitioners, district nurses, and pharmacists, answers most healthcare questions and is an essential part of healthcare. Good cooperation, organization, and coordination between healthcare providers in the neighborhood, region, and at the national level are crucial to keep this care accessible and affordable. The Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) supports this movement and consciously chooses appropriate funding that strengthens cooperation between sectors and domains in primary care.
Room for customization
For that reason, the NZa establishes an experiment funding set for regional collaborations and close neighborhood partnerships. This allows room for regional differences and customization in the organization of care. These are tasks necessary for primary care to function well but cannot be attributed to a single individual patient. The consequence is that funding is not directly linked to the individual patient, which is usual under the Health Insurance Act. Initiatives such as midwifery collaborations and the Thuisarts.nl platform also benefit from a similar form of alternative funding. They improve care for groups of patients and are only possible with funding without direct patient linkage. This is evident from the implementation advice we prepared at the request of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.
Follow-up
The NZa is committed to the accessibility and affordability of care. We do this, among other things, by developing funding. With this step, we also fulfill agreements from the Integral Care Agreement, Additional Care and Welfare Agreement, and the Primary Care Vision. In the coming period, we will monitor together with involved (government) parties whether the course for regional cooperation from the Primary Care Vision works in practice and to what extent the experimental funding achieves what we intend. We also map out possible implementation issues in the system. At the same time, we work with the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the National Health Care Institute, and Health Insurers Netherlands on regulatory and policy adjustments needed to continue supporting such collaborations.