Buurtzorg was founded as an alternative to the larger regional providers of care for older adults. About Buurtzorg
The home care social enterprise set out to compete with these traditional providers and “simplify the health care system in Holland to show that a patient-centred way of working could deliver better services at a reduced cost, by empowering nurses, cutting back on management overheads and encouraging patients’ self-support and independence”.
De Blok told the European Social Services Conference in 2017 that “we wanted to separate care from the administrative process. So we built an IT company which took care of admin, so that nurses could spend time on creating solutions for patients without the need for management.”
Each team only operates at the neighbourhood level (covering approximately 10,000 people and 40 patients), which empowered nurses to go beyond the mere medical management of their patients. Buurtzorg’s nurses are more like ‘health coaches’, who create sustainable solutions leading towards prevention and care independence.
Leveraging existing support systems, “[t]hey are available round the clock and – working closely with GPs – they organise all the supporting care, drawing in families, friends, and volunteers. They see themselves as community-builders.”
Patient satisfaction scores are 30 percent above the national average and in the period between 2008 and 2013, Buurtzorg’s average client rating was 9.1 out of 10
