The Belgian Healthcare execution challenge

What's wrong with Belgian health care today is that we're attempting to provide 21st-century care using a 1970s delivery and finance paradigm.?

We have a disjointed, inefficient and not all-inclusive system; we need one that is more integrated, simple, and effective and that "leaves no patient behind", even if it concerns people with rare or chronic diseases.

Belgium is a resistive-to-change country. The biggest issue we face isn't a lack of solutions. It's a lack of execution. In Belgium, there is no health-care crisis. We are experiencing a political implementation crisis.

For as long as I can remember, the Belgian healthcare system has evolved from crisis to crisis, with additional crisis taxes that were intended to be temporary, but that eventually remained in place till now.

We're on the verge of a crash right now.

• In Belgium, one out of every six persons does not have a family doctor. The odds of receiving one are minimal to none.?
• ERs are closing down more frequently. They're overflowing while they're open.?
• It might take months to acquire a referral to a specialist for urgent matters and up to a year for seeing your gynecologist.
• Urgent surgeries can take up to 2 weeks.
• Drug shortages have become the norm and new medicine approval takes an eternity.
• We still don't know how to pay for medications, especially for rare diseases and are left behind when comparing to other EU countries so depending on where you live, leaves you with a therapy or none.
• We recruit people to run Crowdfunding campaigns. In a country with social security, it should not happen.

Doctors are being burnt out and shutting their offices because they see 30 to 35 patients each day, with just 10 to 15 minutes for consultations.

Nurses are departing for other occupations or have been under-represented since COVID re-oriented their duties.?

Care aides are ecstatic about the prospect for increased income and benefits at the neighborhood grocery shop. We are forcibly removing patients from hospitals and placing them in nursing homes. Long-term care facilities have turned into killing grounds. 15,000 of the 25,000 COVID fatalities in Belgium occurred in nursing facilities, which house 1% of the population. Neglect has been a bloodbath.

We are not receiving good value for our money as the Value Curve for what we "bring in", and what be "get out" is totally being mismanaged, and in some hospitals we still use fax machines, which are essentially 19th-century technology.

We've come a long way with a social security system that emerged shortly after World War II, at a period when nations were rebuilding and investing in public services such as hospitals and social programs such as pensions and social security. People were also having a lot of infants. It was the start of the baby boom, which is now coming to an end.

The postwar baby boom in Belgium began in 1946 and lasted until the early 1970s.?

In 1944, Belgium established the first publicly funded social security system.It provided employees and self-employed persons with health insurance, family allowances, unemployment insurance, and pensions. The system was based on income-based social contributions and was handled by social partners (employers and trade unions).

The concepts of autonomous medical practice, free choice of physician and care facility, and mostly fee-for-service payment were used to provide treatment.?

Unfortunately, not much has changed since then. Meanwhile, the world has changed dramatically, from medicine to demographics. Patients' requirements in 1944 were not the same as they are now. The average age was 28. However, life expectancy was only 63, and the health system provided little treatment other than hospital-based care for severe ailments and, of course, childbirth.

We developed a health system that was completely suited for the demands of the population at the time. Our country's median age is now 42. The average life expectancy is 81 years. The great bulk of care is provided to the elderly. The baby boomers have reached retirement age, but the health-care system has not. Only hospital care and physician services are covered by social security in Belgium to the tune of 75%. They are the only services deemed medically required, quote. We have on of the world's most sophisticated health-care system. Consider it for a moment.

There is no rationale to the way we publicly pay health services in Belgium: 15% of dental care, 60% of home care and long-term care, 80% of pharmaceuticals, and nothing for hearing aids, contraception or prescription glasses. Where is the logic?

Often marketed as the greatest social security system in the world, it is really one of the most complicated health-care systems in the world. This is not something to be proud of. Social security should cover everyone, but it only does so insufficiently. Simply put, what's wrong with Belgian health care today is that we're attempting to give 21st-century care using a 1970s delivery and finance paradigm. We have a disjointed, convoluted, and inefficient system; we need one that is more integrated, simple, and effective. And my argument is that we require modernity. So, how do we pull social security into the twenty-first century being a worldwide innovator??

There have been at least several high-level government-sponsored papers produced (KCE reports) regarding the need to reform social security since its inception. Every one of those studies includes a huge list of suggestions, the most of which, sadly, have not been implemented.

The biggest issue we face is not a lack of solutions. It's a lack of execution. In Belgium, there is no health-care crisis. We are experiencing an implementation crisis. In this country, there is a lack of willingness to adapt. Again, the problem is not a lack of answers, but a lack of guts to put them into action...

My blueprint for health-care reform success? Let's begin by building on our triumphs and cease repeating our mistakes.

Every issue in Belgian health care is structural and administrative in character. There is no difficulty with technology, no problem with medical, and no problem with money.

It's an attitude issue, where our country leaders and MP's need to be bold and brave and set a new course of actions and implementations.