The Dutch Minister of Health and the National Association of General Practitioners have signed an agreement to limit annual increases in health care costs. The budget for general practitioner (GP) care will increase by 2.5 percent, with an additional 0.5 percent increase in order to promote innovations and improvements, such as greater use of eHealth technologies and mental health training of more staff. GPs in return have agreed to prescribe more generic drugs and refer fewer patients to hospital services in order to achieve annual savings of €50 million. The agreement follows many months of tension between the government and GPs and replaces an earlier plan to cut the national primary care budget by 10 percent.
Source:
- http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4510?etoc (subscription required)