Primary healthcare

​​​​​​Primary healthcare is the care provided by general practitioners, pharmacists, allied health professionals, community nurses, specialists in elderly medicine, physicians in intellectual disability medicine, residential primary care providers and geriatric rehabilitation services. They provide care both separately and, where necessary, in combination. Primary healthcare professionals are often people’s first port of contact, and are therefore an important factor in the quality of care. They are also gatekeepers for secondary healthcare. Primary healthcare is under pressure, however, as a result of the growing and increasingly complex demand for care, and of staff shortages.

To help primary healthcare professionals meet the growing and increasingly complex demand for care, we invest in knowledge development for daily practice, and in the application of that knowledge. Developing en using scientific knowledge includes knowledge about prevention, diagnosis and treatment and the organisatie of care, which can be used for education and training. This supports healthcare professionals in practicing their profession. We talk to professional groups to determine what each group needs, with a deliberate focus on multidisciplinary collaboration and organisation of care, so as to devise joint solutions to urgent healthcare and welfare issues.

If you would like to know more about the development and application of knowledge, see our pages on:

• general practitioner care
• allied health professions
• nursing and care
• prevention in primary healthcare
• medicines
• elderly people
• chronic disease
• physical disability