Dutch first: Foundation sues Dutch State over long waiting lists in mental healthcare
For the first time in Dutch history, the State is being held liable for the long waiting lists in mental healthcare. The foundation Recht op ggz, an action group of healthcare workers and patients, has been working on this lawsuit for two years and will file the summons today, Trouw reports.
The lawsuit accuses the State of failing to protect "fundamental and social human rights,” the right to good healthcare, and demands that it address the waiting lists. Patients have to wait an unacceptably long time for care, or receive no appropriate care at all, the foundation said. And the most vulnerable patients, with complex mental health problems, are most affected.
“Strangely enough, within our healthcare system, it is most difficult to arrange care for the people who need it most,” Manon Kleijweg, a psychiatrist and a board member for the foundation, told Trouw. It involves between 200,000 and 300,000 people with severe conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, personality disorders, depression, complex trauma, eating disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. According to the foundation, an estimated 56,000 people urgently need psychiatric help that is not available to them.
The State is responsible for the mental healthcare system, which is why the foundation is holding it accountable. The lawsuit does not target health insurers and care providers. They are responsible for purchasing and supplying healthcare, but they are required to compete with each other by law, which makes it risky for them to truly commit to complex patients.
The Recht op ggz foundation wants the government to change the financing of mental healthcare so that funding comes directly from the Ministry of Public Health, Welfare, and Sport’s budget and is not subject to market influence.
Martin Buijsen, a professor of health law at Erasmus University Rotterdam, applauds the lawsuit. “Because this is the major scandal of our healthcare system: how this most vulnerable group is the victim in the healthcare system,” he told Trouw.
In 2005, healthcare institutions, patient organizations, and health insurers agreed that no one in the Netherlands would wait longer than 14 weeks for care. Yet the government stood by as health insurers repeatedly disregarded these standards by purchasing too little specialized care, Buijsen said. He stressed that the right to health is recognized as a human right. The Nehtelrands, as a signatory to human rights treaties, must abide by it.
