When the now 26-year-old David Versteegen moved from Enschede to Schagen at the beginning of this year, he found out how difficult it was to find a GP. After many calls he found one, but there had to be an easier way. He set up the site general practitioner.nl where to find which GP still had room. The site is now up and running, but finding a GP remains a challenge. “Nobody seems to see this as a top priority.”
The idea was noble. Set up a site to which all GPs in the Netherlands can register, so that people can see at a glance who is still accepting (green dot), not (red dot) or perhaps (orange dot) new patients. David thought it was a good idea, now that GPs are overflowing. Everyone has the right to a general practitioner, but due to the pressure and bureaucracy in the healthcare sector, things sometimes go wrong.
When approaching GPs, the practice turned out to be unruly. More than 100 general practitioners volunteered, but many more were not open to it, as the initiator of the site David Versteegen noticed.
There are now only about 130 general practitioners listed on the site, a pittance of the total. According to Nivel, there are about 5,000 general practices (and 12,000 general practitioners) nationwide.
“After the first registrations, we hoped to be able to collect more data quickly,” says David, “but that turned out to be a lot more complex. And we also encountered resistance. Many GPs found it cumbersome to indicate their availability via an extra system. and they didn’t all want to clearly indicate how much space they still had.”
David then tried it through umbrella organizations and insurers, but that didn’t help either. “It turned out to be even more difficult than we had anticipated.” It’s not that people didn’t see the need for it. On the contrary. “But for various reasons, few wanted to take the first step. It seemed as if the collective responsibility was not there. Most saw something in it, but this was not the primary interest for anyone.”
Incomprehensible, says David, because if people can’t go to their GP, they go to other healthcare providers, according to him. Think of the emergency room and the hospital. “If you make the most accessible care inaccessible, it will of course have other adverse effects.”
To make matters worse, one of the companies that put together the site for David also went bankrupt. The result is that the card with the colored dots on it no longer works properly. “One of the other companies wants to take over the work, but it will not have time until early 2023.”
Looking again
In the meantime, David has moved back to Enschede due to a job change. And then the melody started again: even now he couldn’t get hold of a doctor.
David: “And although there was still the Kop van Noord-Holland GP organization in North Holland that could help me, the same umbrella organization in Twente was unable to help this time. I therefore personally approached all GPs and I eventually found one who actually had no place, but wanted to make an exception for me.”
Frustrating, but it also gave insights. “It was of course very difficult for me in practice, but at the same time it was also another confirmation of the necessity of my website GP. It’s on hold for a while. But next year I definitely want to pick it up again.”