Just a few weeks ago, Health Minister Ernst Kuipers thought it was time for a ‘sign of appreciation’ for the unbridled commitment of all healthcare workers during the peak of the corona pandemic. That sign consisted of a Very Large Coin.
But really: an Insane Big Coin. A kind of giga pizza, but in coin form. What a coin. The minister proudly posed with it, along with some healthcare workers, who see the coin as ‘a piece of recognition’, a superhumanly polite description for what was strongly reminiscent of symbolic flut PR in the form of a Very Pathetic Tip.
This week the Integral Care Agreement had to be signed by representatives of the same care employees. The IZA is a Very Large Agreement on which all sectors of healthcare must agree. How spoiled those people are: first a coin, and then also all together in a chord of 135 pages that is full of, as it is in NRC was summarized, ‘working groups, explorations, transformation plans, work programs, regional images, regional plans, process proposals, work agendas, a menu, guidelines and assessment frameworks’. These working groups, explorations, transformation plans, work programs, regional images, regional plans, process proposals, work agendas, a menu, guidelines and assessment frameworks show us the way to the Holy Grail: more efficient care.
The general practitioners and the elderly care did not sign the agreement. There was doubt about the plans, and doubt whether those plans would actually be implemented. If you read Michiel van der Geest’s reports in this newspaper, you will understand to some extent why. The scenes in the homes of elderly people in need for whose needs there is actually no time left are interspersed with policy explanations for that lack of time, say: the bureaucratic mess through which care providers wade through every day, despite all previous care agreement agreements.
The standard order in district nursing is now: first see what the neighbor can do, then care. In short, a lot of neighbors are needed, but yes: they are at work, to be able to pay the energy bill.
According to a director of an elderly care organization who was interviewed last week, it is a crisis. ‘When will insurers and the government realize this?’
My theory: they do realize it. Whether it concerns climate change, the asylum problem or the shortages in healthcare: you could see them coming from miles away, but then you have to look ahead. A Care Agreement (not: this Care Agreement) can mean a lot for the health care system, but unfortunately: the doubt about the implementation of such an agreement is the logical consequence of the doubt that care providers themselves feel when they have to interrupt their work again for a succession of checks and checks and other rituals to propitiate the Supreme Being of Efficiency.
The countless rules-shrouded suspicion that the government displays towards its citizens, as if a country were made up entirely of incorrigible students, is increasingly degenerating into mutual mistrust.
As Joost Zaat wrote in his last column for this newspaper, a subsidy scheme has now been set up to allow healthcare organizations to ease the regulatory burden themselves. The worry: Carry rocks across, and by the time you get there, we may find out together that no one needs them. Then wear them back. The brick manufacturer keeps asking you along the way if it can’t be done even faster. In this way we work together on an efficient, stone-free other side. And who knows, you might even receive a Very Large Coin as a thank you.