DutchNews, October 5, 2015
Health insurers will interfer less in the
care offered by family doctors and will stop offering financial incentives to
use particular treatments.
This is the result of an agreement reached on Monday
by doctors, insurers, the health ministry and health organisations.
Family
doctors have been very unhappy about the contracts they are being asked to sign
by health insurance companies.
No alternative
Doctors have to sign contracts with
health insurers to ensure their patients are covered for treatment. But many
say insurance companies are unwilling to negotiate while others sign the deals
because they feel they have no alternative, a survey in January by the doctors’
association LHV found.
Since 2006, health insurers have been tasked by the
health ministry with bringing down the cost of health care. As a result, contracts with family doctors
have included rewards being coupled to the prescribing of specific
anti-depressants, regardless of what suits the patient.
Some family doctors are
also being rewarded for using research labs with which the health insurer has a
contract.
Many doctors were furious about these contracts, seeing them as
moving patient care from the surgery to the insurer.
Major changes
The new
agreement brings in three important and major changes. Family doctors will have
more equality with insurers and more flexibility in what treatments they can
offer.
In addition, bureaucracy will be decreased by scrapping unnecessary
administration, and a less time-consuming method for checking the quality of
doctors will be introduced.
‘Health insurers will again trust the expertise of
the family doctor,’ doctors’ association LHV chairwoman Ella Kalsbeek told the
NRC. ‘That is very important. It will give doctors more time for what is most
important: care of the patient,’
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