Specialists face “straitjacket” in the Netherlands

A powerful committee of elder statesmen in the Netherlands has recommended scrapping the freelance status of medical specialists and bringing them under the control of hospital management. Specialists would lose the fee for service system whereby they act largely as free agents within the hospital and charge individual patients. The scheme was criticised when costs rose 22% in three years while there was only a 5.2% increase in the number of patients. Instead, specialists would be paid a basic wage related to their workload and …