“To keep Dutch healthcare accessible, change is both necessary and possible,” argued Prof. Marco Blanker during his oration on Sept. 13, 2024. He emphasized restoring trust in health care providers, the need to reduce administrative burdens, and creating space for family physicians to do their jobs effectively. With his keen observations and ideas about a future centered on cooperation, trust and innovation, he got the audience thinking.
Better accessibility: practical solutions for family medicine
“GP care is under great pressure. There are staff shortages, many people don’t have a family doctor, , access to care is at risk,” says Marco Blanker in his oration. In addition to analyzing the current problems, Blanker offers a series of solutions. He stresses the importance of:
- Restoring trust in health care providers, especially family physicians. This means reducing administrative burdens and giving more room for family physicians to do their jobs without constant accountability.
- Using academic workshops to test and evaluate innovation in healthcare. These workshops can help develop new, practical solutions for primary care.
- Smarter collaboration with other healthcare professionals, such as district nurses, to better distribute tasks and ease the workload for family physicians.
These reforms, according to Blanker, are essential to making family medicine not only more accessible, but also more sustainable and humane. With this vision and proposals for change, Blanker takes a clear step toward future-proof primary care.
UNH congratulates Marco Blanker
On behalf of UNH, we would like to congratulate Marco Blanker on this wonderful milestone in his career. With his research and vision, Marco Blanker remains an important voice in the discussion about the future of primary care. We are proud of his contribution to UNH and look forward to future collaborations that will further strengthen and innovate primary care.