Appropriate care

Appropriate care emerges from developments that have already been in use for several years. Examples are value-driven care and enoutcome-orited care, deciding together, right care at the right place and positive health.

Appropriate care has four basic principles:

• Appropriate care is value driven; therefore, demonstrably more effective with a limited use of funding, personnel and resources;
• Appropriate care arises together with the patient and with the people around the patient (deciding together);
• Appropriate care is the right care in the right place and, where possible, this is organised close to the patient;
• Appropriate care concerns health instead of illness.

The quality of healthcare in the Netherlands is under pressure due to rapidly rising health costs and an increasing shortage of healthcare professionals. The move towards appropriate care must prevent the healthcare system from coming to a standstill and prevent a situation where not everybody will receive the care they need.

At the end of 2020, the National Health Care Institute and the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) published the advisory report 'Samenwerken aan passende zorg: de toekomst is nú' [Working together on appropriate care: the future is now] (in Dutch). This states what is needed to realise appropriate care. In 2022, the Dutch' Kader Passende Zorg' [Framework Appropriate Care] was published. This framework describes the joint movement towards appropriate care and what the government expects from everybody in this regard. In the Integraal Zorgakkoord [Integral Care Agreement] (in Dutch), agreements have been made between the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and several large healthcare parties. If we are to bring about appropriate care, then everybody (government, citizens and organisations) needs to fulfil their role in the appropriate manner.

For a long time now, ZonMw has contributed to the development and dissemination of knowledge about the various principles of appropriate care in many of our programmes. We develop, render accessible and implement knowledge across domains and disciplines to realise appropriate care in practice. This knowledge concerns both the content and organisation of appropriate care.