Gesture Zilveren Kruis to GPs about practice nurse

Health insurer Zilveren Kruis provides general practitioners with a helping hand with regard to the reimbursements of general practitioners’ practice assistants. Unrest had arisen among a group of general practitioners because of a new method of funding practice nurses. Zilveren Kruis therefore offers GPs both the old and the new method from 1 April.

“The transition period to the new policy was too short for a number of GPs,” the Zilveren Kruis said. “We should have done that more carefully. We have therefore decided to offer GPs a choice.”

General practitioners feared that the new method would take a financial hit. Until now, the reimbursement for practice nurses was based on two pillars: a fixed amount per chronic patient plus an extra amount for all registered patients at the practice. However, according to the GPs, the latter has decreased and the practice nurses had to compensate for this with separate reimbursements per procedure, such as, for example, having ears cleaned.