The government is threatening to fine health insurers that don't do their utmost to shorten waiting lists for mental healthcare, State Secretary Paul Blokhuis of Public Health said to the Volkskrant.
This is one of the measures Blokhuis has planned to tackle waiting lists in mental health care. Others include asking patients to be more assertive, and making it possible to place care providers under stricter supervision.
The impression that budget cuts in mental healthcare lead to more problems and incidents involving "disturbed persons" is not reflected in the figures of Dutch health insurers, the Volkskrant reports.
Over the past four years expenditures on mental healthcare for adults increased by 10 percent to 3.5 billion euros. The number of times mental healthcare crisis teams were deployed also decreased - from around 70 thousand times in 2013 to around 60 thousand last year.
The Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate received a total of 41 reports of patients or their relatives signing non-disclosure contracts with healthcare professionals. Minister Edith Schippers of Public Health called on the public to report such contracts, which are not illegal but considered "highly undesirable"
Three quarters of Dutch housing corporations noticed a significant increase in disturbances caused by disturbed tenants since the decentralization of healthcare at the start of 2015, according to a study done by housing dome Aedes among 174 corporations.
The Salvation Army is taking on an increasing amount of the care for vulnerable people in society due to the cutbacks in mental health care. In the Salvation Army's own words, this mostly involves people who "have no helper" - people who do not have a social network to help them and thus can not function on their own in the participation society.
Health insure CZ announced yesterday that from January 1st they will no longer be doing business with a large number of practitioners of mental disorders.
