Working on Healthcare

When
2010-2011
Client
Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
What
Assess the effects the policy that the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has pursued in recent years has had on six areas in the healthcare sector. Share the findings with healthcare professionals and administrators. In addition, highlight the client-healthcare professional relationship and show that the quality of care largely depends on individual strength, creativity and entrepreneurship.

Background
The healthcare sector is making a fundamental transition from a supply- to a demand-driven system. This will have major consequences for the way in which healthcare is financed and organised. Healthcare providers, insurers, authorities and patients, or more accurately clients, will play a different role in the new structure. This transition is still in full swing. Keywords are: 'less government interference', 'demand-driven' and 'more freedom for healthcare institutions and professionals'.

The Ministry wanted to know what the policy had achieved up to that point. Where does the sector stand? What are the results and the trends? Where are the bottlenecks? What can we learn from them? And who is responsible for taking action - to Work on Healthcare?

The assessments
BKB and consulting firm Plexus carried out a total of six assessments, each one covering a different policy area: Cost & Quality, Construction & Diversity of Housing; Administrative Costs; Labour Market; the Healthcare Recipient; and Value Creation. The reports were presented at meetings for healthcare professionals, administrators and other stakeholders. They will discuss the findings with each other.

BKB organises the meetings. Here is a report (PDF) from one of those meetings.

The third assessment, More time for the client, on administrative red tape, came to a striking conclusion. People who work in healthcare primarily want to provide care, not fill in forms. And yet a great deal of their time is spent on administration, leaving little time for the client. Healthcare professionals spend an average of 60% of their working day on direct care and 40% on administration. However, healthcare institutions differ significantly; some have reduced their administrative load to 20%, while in others there is still a lot of room for improvement.

The research also found that the government and those working in the field have a different understanding of administrative loads. The number of administrative obligations in the workplace is much larger than in the government's perspective. Many rules are not issued by the government itself but by local councils, the healthcare administration office, insurers or the institution itself. This is perhaps the cause of the Babylonian confusion that frequently arises in discussions about reducing administrative loads. It can be the case that, according to its own definition, the government has successfully reduced the regulatory burden, but that little has changed in practice.

Observations like these provide an interesting starting point for a sector-wide dialogue about the future.

BKB edited the public versions of the reports and was responsible for the media policy. This is the public version (PDF) of More time for the client.

The Healthcare Heroes
Running parallel to each assessment was the election of a Healthcare Hero. This is a healthcare professional who has personally contributed to improving healthcare, in particular within the policy area covered by the research.

District nurse and Healthcare Hero Annie Beute heads into the community.

There are always three nominees, who campaign for a month to win as many votes as possible. It is an online election, and votes can be cast on werkenaandezorg.nl. The winner will be announced during a presentation of the report.

Koos Maquelin is one of the winners. He works in acute psychiatry, a sort of intensive care for people in psychological distress. "We deal with severe cases, harrowing situations," says Maquelin. "I’ve been in this profession from more than 35 years, and for me everyone in my department is a healthcare hero. I want to show this department and psychiatry in a good light. We give everyone who needs it the care they deserve. It’s up to the policymakers to make that financially sustainable."

BKB organises the Healthcare Hero Election and provides the nominees with media support.

Would you like to know more about this project? Please contact Maarten van Heems