Toespraak van staatssecretaris Van Rijn over de gezondheidszorg in Nederland

Toespraak | 09-11-2015

Mr. Chen YueBin,

Mr. Zhang Naizi,

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for your warm welcome. It is a great honour for me to be here today.

We have been visiting your beautiful country for four days now and I must say that I’m very touched by your hospitality.

We are here because China and The Netherlands face similar challenges concerning ageing societies.

I discussed our common challenges and goals with your vice minister of Health and Family Planning mrs. Cui Li and vice minister of Civil Affairs, Mr. Zou Ming. We agreed that we can and must work together. Therefore, we agreed that we will sign a MoU on elderly care.

As you know I’m accompanied by an interesting mix of companies and academia to present the Dutch Life Sciences and Health sector to China. I hope and expect that this MoU will be a good basis and platform for everyone here to intensify public and private relations.

The Dutch Health care sector is:

• a sector that has the flexibility to approach new markets;

• a sector that is adaptable and innovative to meet the changing needs of patients and health care professionals;

• and above all: a sector that is aware of the necessity to join forces for smart solutions for sustainable health care.

This is also represented in the business delegation represented by 25 companies and knowledge institutes.

During this mission we focus on the health care challenges posed by an aging population. The three main challenges in The Netherlands that I will briefly address are:

1. Financial sustainability;

2. Finding a new balance between professional care and family care;

3. Changing views on what good care is.

Ad 1. Financial sustainability

In the Netherlands, the costs of long term care for the elderly rose from 200 mln Euro's in the '80s (?) to 30 bln today, resulting in a situation where approximately 30% of the national budget is spent on health care an ever growing part of it on long term care.

This was already a problem in times of economic prosperity; in a financial and economic recessions situation it's flat out unsustainable.

We didn't deal with this by simply cutting costs. We did this by redefining health care:

• from an institutional system where one size fits all;
• to a patient centered view where not just health problems but also personal, situational and communal circumstances are taken into account.

This sounds very reasonable, but it is pretty difficult.

First of all, patient centered health care means that not everyone is getting the same care. As a matter of fact that’s exactly what we want.

If you ask what support or health care is needed in a specific situation, you take into account if someone is:

• rich or poor;
• is lonely or has a supportive network;
• lives in a big city with little community care or a small village with a lot;

etc.

When taking these things into account we found out that good care does not necessarily mean government care.

We discovered that when simply asking people: "What is your problem? What can you and your family do yourself? Where do we have to chip in?', we came up with solutions in which often less care was required then before.

So by reforming our system from institutional care to patient centered care we could maintain a high level of well being and at the same time reduce costs.

The result of this is that the growth of costs of our long term health care is in pace with our economic growth again.

Ad. 2 new balance communal care institutional care.

This also meant, this is my second point, that a new balance between communal care and institutional care had to be reached. Caring for someone does not mean either care from your family or from a nurse: we want to create a circle of support around people.A circle of support where communities, health care professionals and governments interact and work together.

Innovative new ways of working are therefore required. A great opportunity here lies in public/private partnerships.

The Dutch businesses and knowledge institutes that are represented here today are eager to explore opportunities for cooperation with you.

Ad 3. New generation, new demands to health care.

Finally, the third challenge we face, is that a new generation of elderly means new ways of living and thus: new demands to care.

In the Netherlands older people used to go to homes for the elderly at around 70 years old. They did this because the situation there was more luxurious then at home: there was food, central heating and a bed.

Over the past decades, as standards of living at home rose, fewer people wanted to live in these homes.

To illustrate this:

• the number of people of the age of 80 or older doubled in the past twenty years;
• yet, the number of people living in homes decreased, by 50 percent.

This means 2 things:

First of all that people who do live in nursing homes have more severe mental and physical problems. Therefore, caring for these people became a more demanding job. This of course requires new skills from professionals.

Second of all, it means that the elderly who live in their own home need far more medical care then we were used to. To facilitate this, we decided that home nurses should be given the position to manage home care themselves.

We gave them the trust and freedom to decide how much care should be given to someone at any given time.

In our delegation are businesses and knowledge institutes who can share their knowledge and experience both in the field of home care and Care in nursing homes.

Ad 4. Concluding remarks: Public Private Partnership

Ladies and gentleman,

As said before we face the same challenges. Governments can and must play their part in meeting them.

But in order to keep healthcare accessible and affordable it is crucial to continue to innovate. It is not just about high tech innovations in medical technology but also about innovations in the way we organize care. We all know that most innovations are not initiated by governments, that is why we need to join forces with researchers and businesses.

It's the government’s task to create an enabling environment to facilitate those innovations. That is why we initiated a (strong) industry policy in the Netherlands in order to stimulate innovation. And it pays off, according to the World Economic Forum The Netherlands ranks among the top five competitive economies in the world.

The Dutch businesses and knowledge institutes that are represented here today are eager to explore opportunities for cooperation with you.

I'm convinced that by sharing our knowledge and joining our efforts we will be able to serve our elderly better. I hope this seminar will be an important step in strengthening our cooperation and I hope we will have some fruitful discussions this afternoon.

I thank you for your attention.