Health minister Edith Schippers wants family doctors to compete with each other in an effort to improve patient services and make it easier to switch doctors, the NRC reported on Saturday.

The paper says the minister has asked the national healthcare authority (NZA) to look at ways of increasing competition between doctors.

At the moment, family practitioners receive a flat payment based on the number of patients they have signed up - an average of 2,300 per practice. Schippers has asked the NZA to investigate the effect of abolishing the flat payment and giving doctors a fee for every treatment they carry out instead.

Criticism

Doctors have immediately condemned the plan, the NRC says.

'If we have to work on keeping our patients, we will be tempted to offer them more treatment than necessary because that is what they want,' Bart Mijman, chairman of the Amsterdam doctors' federation, told the paper. 'Now a doctor often sends a patient home having soothed his fears, but without treatment.'

In addition, it is important that doctors and patients establish a long-term relationship, he said. According to Schippers, 14% of patients are unhappy with their doctor.

Fees

Meanwhile, the Telegraaf quoted Schippers as saying it is inevitable that patients will end up paying a fee to visit their doctor. 'I think we should do this tomorrow,' the minister is quoted as saying by the paper.

'I think it will happen sooner or later, whether I or my successor introduce it,' she said. 'It is necessary to keep the system functional'

While everyone currently has to pay the first €170 of their medical treatment, visits to GPs are not included.