Netherlands National OT News

News from Netherlands, 2019

National agreement for Allied Health Professionals in the Netherlands

Under supervision of the Dutch Government, 6 groups of allied health professionals (PPN), the Dutch Patients Federation, the healthcare insurance companies and the governmental Department of Healthcare, Welfare & Sports, reached an agreement for the next 4 years considering several topics. The 6 groups of PPN include: Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Exercise Therapists, Speech Therapists, Dieticians and Dermatologists.

In the Netherlands, the main political topic in healthcare at the moment is:  Providing the right care in the right place (on the right time).  The central goal of this programme is to look at the functioning and participation of people in the current society, both physically, psychologically and socially. These are the main issues of the agreement:

  • we keep working together towards providing the right care in the right place (on the right time);
  • by investing money and manpower in scientific research we are going to improve the quality of the professionals and their work;
  • Improving the flow of information for the patients, for example: shared decision making, information about the quality of practices and measuring the experiences of the patient: Patient Reported Experience Measurement (PREM)
  • we are going to improve the way PPN is organised in the regions of the Netherlands. We believe that regional organized divisions of PPNs will have a better and greater contribution to healthcare;
  • we are going to improve the digital communication between health professionals and between these professionals and their patients. Plus, we are collecting complete and reliable data;
  • all the covenant parties will execute a joint cost research, because at the moment, the rates as paid by the insurance companies are considered to be too low.

The Minister of health made a total of 15 million euros available for the program as a whole.

The agreement has been signed in the name of the OT’s by Theo van der Bom, President of the Dutch National Occupational Therapy Association, Ergotherapie Nederland.

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