Emergency departments in The Netherlands

Emergency medicine in The Netherlands is faced with an increasing interest by politicians and stakeholders in health care. This is due to crowding, increasing costs, criticism of the quality of emergency care, restructuring of out-of-hours services in primary care and the introduction of a training programme for emergency physicians in 2000. A comprehensive search was conducted of published research, policy reports and updated Dutch websites on acute care. Publications were included in this review if these referred to emergency care, including emergency departments (ED), general practitioner (... Mehr ...