During the past 20 years, health insurance companies that used to be health insurance funds have spent approximately 300 million euro on care innovation projects. Some 6,200 projects have been (co-)financed with the former health insurance fund reserves and the returns on these (another 100 million euros). The reserves belonged to the voluntary health insurance funds. That voluntary health insurance was abolished in 1986. Agreements were made at the time about how this money should be spent in order to keep it in the health care sector.
Many health insurance funds had already placed the reserves in separate legal entities. In 1999, they set up the Stichting Centraal Fonds RVVZ (Reserves Formerly Insured Health Insurance Funds) to use the reserves for the benefit of innovations in health care. The health insurers involved made a joint agreement to spend these reserves in twenty years. This period has now come to an end.
The concluding report, ‘Lines to the Future’, presents eighteen striking examples of investments in projects made over the years by the health insurance companies involved. The examples provide a good picture of efforts in the field of prevention, shared decision making, self-management, chain care, and cooperation of care and social domain.
More information (in Dutch).