The way general practitioners (GPs) are paid has only limited effects on the affordability, accessibility and quality of care. Medical ethics and guidelines in Dutch general practice seem to have counteracted large differences in the provision of health care, says Christel van Dijk in NIVEL-research on which she attained the doctoral degree at Tilburg University.
It occurs that a general practitioner (GP) has a feeling that something is not OK with the patient and relates the feeling to a suspected cancer diagnosis without knowing why. This gut feeling appears to be not an imprecise but nonetheless valuable instrument. In two third of the cases this gut feeling leads to a diagnosis and in one third the ultimate diagnosis is cancer.
The introduction of managed competition in the Dutch healthcare system along with public reporting of quality information is associated with performance improvement in health plans, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Health Services Research.
Nederlands
