‘Today, the number of residential care centres that aims for small-scale group living is steadily increasing. ‘In Flanders we have a medical model for residential care for the elderly which makes it possible for sometimes 30 older people to be accommodated in one department’, says Van den Heuvel, advisor for residential care for the elderly in Flanders. An interesting difference between the Netherlands and Flanders is evident here. The group standard in Flanders is considerably less strict. But Gupta also warns against having too high expectations of the results, and points to the severe shortage of labour in this market, especially when it comes to health care staff for nursing homes. The extra money of more than €2 billion that the current government puts into Dutch care for older people makes an important difference. In practice however, that number is still far from being achieved. Since the Quality Framework for Nursing Home Care (the quality standard in the Netherlands since 2017), the Netherlands recommends two care providers in a group of eight patients. The Dutch health care staff is seriously ageing, while in Flanders the proportion of young people in nursing home care is much higher. Staff standardĪ striking difference lies in the staff standard and the staff composition within the nursing homes. ‘The presence of commercial initiators in (elderly) care in Flanders is a historically developed habit and not everyone is pleased with that,’ says the Flemish Minister of Welfare, Jo VanDeurzen. Flanders does have however, a much larger number of commercial ‘for profit institutions’, namely 22 percent compared with only 2 percent in the Netherlands. The average number of beds per intramural care setting does not differ much in both countries and is between 80 and 100. Per 100 people above 80, the Netherlands has 15 occupied nursing home beds. There is a difference in the burden of care within Dutch and Flemish nursing homes, but in general the statistics in both countries are comparable. In the Netherlands this amount can vary between €5 and €75 per day depending on income and capital. According to Gupta, the average personal contribution is €46 (daily rate minus financial compensation) this is about 30 percent higher than the average personal contribution in the Netherlands. The minimum contribution in Flanders is €32 per day. It is important to mention that the personal contribution of residents in Flemish nursing homes is considerably higher than in Dutch institutions. For this, patients receive an average of 17 hours versus 12 hours of care per week respectively. The total cost for a day of nursing in the Netherlands is €205, compared with €150 in Flanders. This has resulted in a report published in May of this year, entitled ‘Nursing Home Care in the Netherlands and Flanders: what can we learn from one another?’ The most important discovery is that Flemish nursing homes are cheaper and deliver fewer hours of care, while the quality perception of clients in the Netherlands and Flanders hardly differs. Gupta has compared the accessibility, quality and cost of nursing home care in the Netherlands with that of Flanders. In this article we summarise the findings of the Gupta report and Vilans board member Henk Nies comments on the outcomes. This is evident from a recent Gupta report. Nevertheless, the quality perception of clients is quite comparable. Flemish nursing homes are cheaper and spend fewer hours per week delivering care than nursing homes in the Netherlands.
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