GPs believe that the cabinet is doing too little to prepare healthcare for a new revival of the corona virus, various associations write in a letter to healthcare minister Ernst Kuipers. In plans that the minister shared last week, the general practitioners lack the “urgency at the ministry to direct.”
The lack of healthcare staff in hospitals will lead to more care being provided to general practitioners, just like during previous corona waves, the National General Practitioners Association and the Dutch College of General Practitioners write, among others. That means that other concerns are under pressure. That is why, according to the GPs, “clear choices must be made about what no longer happens and the government will have to communicate well about this. Because keeping everything in the air during high waves of contamination is simply not possible.”
Plans for, for example, monitoring patients at home are also not yet sufficiently concrete. According to the GPs, the financing of a new corona wave is also not in order. “The idea that dealing with a pandemic is now mainstream care and can be solved within current funding is totally unrealistic,” the letter authors said.