We should stop whining about healthcare crises and healthcare infections, Marcel Levi believes, because healthcare is very successful. Of course, there are problems. One solution is a different organization of care: networks instead of market forces.
Medicine has achieved incredible successes in recent years, Marcel Levi, chairman of NWO, told Care & ict on Thursday. "Because of impulses from cell biology, genetics, data science, physics, so on and so forth, you can't think of a disease that is not very much better in 2025 than it was five, 10 or 15 years ago."
Laws and regulations
Thereby, the healthcare system in the Netherlands is super-organized . "For that, we all have different laws, different regulations, different funding streams. Perhaps the biggest problem is that those streams and laws don't communicate very well with each other."
Chaos and bustle
Because practice is often a bit more unruly, with the daily chaos, busyness and capacity issues. "But a healthcare infarct? When I walk around the hospital, I don't notice it." With a variation on Mark Rutte, he even said, "It's never been as cool as it is now!"
Consequence of our success
Of course, he does not deny the problems in healthcare, such as too few people, too little money and too little capacity, but they are mostly the result of our own success, Levi believes. The chances of dying of a heart attack have dropped dramatically. "You don't manage to die from that anymore. The cardiologists don't allow that."
State Enemy
Life expectancy has risen sharply. "So don't be fooled. It's not asylum seekers or immigration that is State Enemy Number One. It's the centenarians who are going to flood us." Care must be adjusted to that. That's happening, but not fast enough, according to Levi.
Hospitals all the same
While the number of beds and average length of stay has fallen dramatically in recent decades from 80,000 beds in 1970 to 12,500 in 2025, the number of hospitals has not changed: there are still more than eighty of them.
And therein lies the key to change, says Levi, "These hospitals are all the same. With all preferably as many specialties as possible, all an emergency room, all a highly qualified ICU. We have enough PET-CT capacity in the Netherlands to add half of Germany. Why don't we organize this differently?"
Networking
Concentration, dispersion and regional networking are the answer, according to Levi. Doing things more often in some hospitals and doing things less in others. "We need to form regional networks: a big hospital where complicated things happen and small hospitals where simpler things happen, but closer to home."
'We have to do it ourselves'
That is a challenge both organizationally and in terms of ICT, Levi acknowledges. Because who is going to take care of that? Not politicians, according to him. "There is only one answer to that question: we have to do it ourselves."
The potential of all the good ideas of people in healthcare has not been sufficiently used until now, Levi believes. That's why he called on everyone to feel a little more Michael Jordan: " We are very successful and although we may be hitting the limits of our success: above all, be proud and celebrate your success!
