Dutch healthcare is doing well!

Laurens van der Tang
CEO VitalHealth

The Dutch healthcare sector likes to complain. About everything going so horribly slow. About the fact that this would be unthinkeable in other industries. About the government having no clue. About the national EHR initiative failing miserably. About physicians resisting change. About healthcare managers who don't manage. About GP's who don't want anything. About healthcare insurance companies that lack any vision. About health IT providers that over promise and under deliver.

All this complaining is combined with endless and sickening predictions about the future. Almost every presentation starts with this. Aging and the ratio between workers and non-workers in 2025. Rapidly increasing healthcare costs growing to astronomic proportions. Numbers of people with Diabetes, Dementia, Depression, and Obesitas. You name it...! It's time to stop this nonsense. We age, but stay healthier than ever before. We have a great healthcare system that functions at an acceptable cost level. Nobody who needs it is excluded from healthcare. Many people work in healthcare every day with great passion and commitment. Throughout the country there are countless expiriments to test new ways to work together. Our primary care system is reorganizing itself rapidly in coops that promote working together to provide better care. There are hundreds of health network initiatives that enable healhcare providers to collaborate in a seamless manner to provide patient-driven care. Regional health exchanges are being set-up to facilitate electronic exchange of information. Patient portals are enabling better and easier access to healthcare and are instrumental to facilitate patient-driven heathcare. Prevention and healthy living is getting more and more attention.

Even healthcare IT is moving in the right direction! Take the rehabilitation sector in The Netherlands. All rehabilitation centers have decided to work together to develop and implement a joint EMR. Everybody participates. The development is done in close cooperation with the national institute for the exchange of health information: Nictiz. This intiative is based on a modern web-based health management software platform: the VitalHealth Platform. The development is in full swing. It will be ready next year! It is going well with Dutch healthcare. Of course, things could go even better. It has to go better. Things could go faster. Things have to go faster. But things aren't that bad! Not at all.