Buurtzorg Nederland is a Dutch home-care organization which has attracted international attention for its innovative use of independent nurse teams in delivering relatively low-cost care.
According to Sharda S. Nandram, the company has created a new management approach: “integrating simplification,” characterized by a simple, flat organizational structure through which a wide range of services, facilitated by information technology, can be provided.
[1] The organisation describes a package of six sequential components, which cannot be delivered separately: The company employed 10,000 nurses and 4,500 home help workers in 2018, with teams in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Japan.
[3] In the USA the organization faces the need to deal with multiple payers, each with its own payment rules and procedures which makes it difficult for nurses to do their own billing as they do in Holland.
The Royal College of Nursing said, “The RCN has long supported this model, which was founded in the Netherlands and has garnered international acclaim for its nurse-led, cost-effective principles, which rely upon nurse-innovation leading the way for care of patients in their own communities.”[5] In France, the not for profit organisation Soignons Humain (www.soignonshumain.com) has started operating in 2016, as official licensed partner of Buurtzorg.