This Way Physiotherapist Remains Accessible And Affordable

Physiotherapists can contribute more to effective care, provided that insurers and the professional group have an eye for their common interests.Health insurers and physiotherapists are in a difficult position. They often face each other because of conflicting interests. Physiotherapists experience that their income is lagging behind, the administrative burden remains high and the number of treatments per patient continues to fall. Health insurers see the costs of supplementary insurance rising, and therefore have to limit the package or increase the premium and have no insight into the benefits of the care provided.

Both Physiotherapists and health insurers are under pressure. If both parties stick to their own interests, there is a real risk of losing affordable and accessible high-quality physiotherapy. The opposing interests stand in the way of innovations in physiotherapy. There is potentially a lot of gains for the patient, health insurers and physiotherapists to be gained by looking for common interests. And there are indeed:

Developing good instruments for measuring the outcome of physiotherapy treatments. This makes it possible to objectively demonstrate the added value of physiotherapy and improve the quality of care where possible.

Strengthen care substitution, so that more patients receive care from home instead of in the hospital. By deploying physiotherapists to strengthen the substitution of care, the work available for physiotherapists increases and potentially high costs of hospital care can be avoided.Reverse the decline in numbers of insured persons with additional insurance. This is possible, for example, through new low-threshold insurance policies where the risk of health care use is shared between the insured, Physiotherapists and health insurer (for example via a no-claim discount).

Make agreements about more income security for the physical therapist, with fewer incentives to increase production. This can be done, for example, by splitting the fee into a subscription and a price per appointment.

Taking into account the conflicting interests, insurers and physiotherapists can come to a joint approach to further increase the added value of physiotherapy. Together they must explore the preconditions for this approach. In this way, the role of Physiotherapists in the health care system can be strengthened and the efficiency of care can be further improved. The new administrative agreements are a great first step towards this.