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Table 1 Features of general practitioner (GP) cooperatives in the Netherlands and charging system [22, 23, 44]

From: Migrants’ motives and expectations for contacting out-of-hours primary care: a survey study

Theme

Feature

General

Out-of-hours primary care has been provided by large-scale general practitioner (GP) cooperatives since the year 2000

Every GP has to do a minimum number of shifts at the GP cooperative to maintain his/her registration as a GP.

Participation of 50–250 GPs per cooperative with a mean of 4 h on call per week with a compensation of about €65/h

About 120 GP cooperatives in the Netherlands

Population of 100,000 to 500,000 patients with an average care consumption of 250 contacts/1000 inhabitants per year

Out-of-hours defined as daily from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., all public holidays and the entire weekend

Per shift GPs have different roles: supervising telephone triage, doing centre consultations or home visits

The triage is supervised by telephone consultation doctors who can be consulted in case of doubt, while also checking and authorising all calls

Location

GP cooperative usually situated in or near a hospital

Distance of patients to GP cooperative is 30 km at most

Accessibility

Access via a single regional telephone number, meaning the first contact is mostly with a triage nurse (only 5–10% walk in without a call in advance)

Telephone triage by nurses supervised by GPs: contacts are divided into telephone advice (38%), centre consult (52%), or GP home visit (9%)

Facilities

Home visits are supported by trained drivers in identifiable fully equipped GP cars (e.g. oxygen, intra venous drip equipment, automated external defibrillator, medication for acute treatment)

Information and communication technology (ICT) support including electronic patient files, online connection to the GP’s car, and sometimes connection with the electronic medical record in the GP’s daily practice

Charging system

Healthcare is largely covered by health insurance

All residents over 18 years pay a monthly premium to their health insurance provider. There is no premium for children

Employers pay a part of their employee’s income to the tax administration for healthcare costs

Patients do not have to pay an additional amount for GP care, both during and outside office hours

Residents over 18 years must an annual deductible (385 euro in 2016) in case of use of healthcare (including emergency departments). This deductible is neither applicable to GP care, nor to children