Increasing quality and lowering costs is the holy grail of healthcare. And that’s precisely what Netherlands-based home care organization, Buurtzorg, has achieved. Listen on to find out how they do it.
Buurtzorg was founded in 2006 by Jos de Blok and a small team of professional nurses who were dissatisfied with the delivery of health care by traditional home care organisations in the Netherlands. It has a simple, flat organisational structure and self-governing nurse teams to deliver better health outcomes, increase both patient and staff satisfaction and reduce costs.
Starting out with just four nurses, Buurtzorg had grown to 9,700 nurses and 850 teams serving 70,000 patients a year by 2015. It has also has opened a subsidiaries in Sweden, Japan and in the USA, operating in Minnesota.
In this conversation, Dawna talks to Buurtzorg’s founder and CEO, Jos de Blok, a former nurse with a background in economics, who works collaboratively with government, health care workers and communities to redesign the system one step at a time.
They explore:
- Why healthcare costs decrease when you shift the focus to patient outcomes.
- How self-managed teams work and what makes it all work.
- How the health insurance system and competitors felt about the Buurtzorg disruption.
- How communities benefit when continuity and certainty replace uncertainty in the health care experience.
Find out more about Buurtzorg and its mission or watch Jos de Blok’s keynote at Agile Sweden.
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