About Buurtzorg
Buurtzorg is a pioneering healthcare organisation established 12 years ago in the Netherlands. It started with one team of four nurses and now has 950 teams and 10,000 nurses and nurse assistants providing more than half of Dutch home care.
At its heart is a nurse-led model of holistic care provided by self-managed neighbourhood teams – Buurtzorg is Dutch for Neighbourhood Care.
Teams are supported by regional coaches, an IT system that works because nurses were involved in designing it, and back office support designed around and dedicated to their needs.
The model has revolutionised health and social care in the Netherlands. Patient satisfaction rates are the highest of any healthcare organisation, impressive financial savings have been made and employee satisfaction is high.
Teams are self-managed, having professional freedom to decide how they organise the work, share responsibilities and make decisions with a simple and clear operational framework agreed with their organisation.
Not only has Buurtzorg grown as an organisation, it has also supported change in other health and social care providers, influenced major changes in the insurance and regulatory environments and extended its model into home care, mental health care and maternity and youth services.
The Buurtzorg group now employs more than 14,000 people and – in response to demand from all over the world – now supports change in a growing number of countries, including Britain and Ireland.
Buurtzorg in Britain and Ireland
Although the health and social care systems differ from the Netherlands, the challenges in the UK and Ireland are remarkably similar to those Buurtzorg was founded to overcome: ever increasing demand, spiralling costs, fragmented care models, inadequate outcomes and disillusioned staff teams.
We work with our clients to find solutions that work for them, and we have learnt from doing this in Britain since 2015 what works and what doesn’t.
We provide access to the experience of over 14,000 nurses and care givers in the Netherlands and to the Buurtzorg leaders, back office specialists and coaches who have proven expertise in the organisational changes required to support self-managed frontline teams.
Take a look at what we do
The status quo is not an option: primary care must change
A few weeks ago a Manchester GP and three of his staff were hospitalised by a violent attack in their surgery. A 59-year-old man was arrested and so I won’t say any more about that incident. But I do want to talk about the pressures that are stoking anger and despair...
“Health and social care begins at home.” Who knew?
“Health – and social care – begins at home. Family first, then community, then the state.” So said Sajid Javid at the Conservative Party conference. It would be easier to enjoy the mirth his statement stimulated if it weren’t that it also sparked even more...
Health and wellbeing creation from PPL – let’s start the conversation here!
PPL are proud to sponsor Buurtzorg’s Caring Places: Building Healthy Communities Festival on Tuesday 19th October 2021. In preparation for joining the conversations at the festival, we have reflected as a team on our work supporting places to create healthier and...
Reinventing The NHS: Removing The Shackles Of Bureaucracy (Guest blog for Corporate Rebels)
How are work outcomes affected by the treatment of those who do it? I have been exploring this question for ~50 years. In that time, one comment stuck with me more than any other. It was made in 1998 when I interviewed a group of men in Indianapolis who had redesigned...
Why I am worried about the future
Yesterday, with family, I scattered the ashes of my late grandfather, so he was at last laid to rest with my grandmother. It was a sombre but funny thing to do, we know he would have laughed at us in many ways for making a fuss and doing it in the rain. He had a funny...
Join the growing coalition for change!
“Don’t we all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for each other, doing the things that matter to us?” That’s the vision articulated by Social Care Future and we in Buurtzorg share it. In...
The future of social care depends on all of us
Some say it’s a step forward that the United Kingdom government has finally addressed the challenge of social care funding. Others say the planned tax changes are so regressive as to be unsupportable. Both points are valid, but I say that if there is one conclusion to...
Caregiving is more than a social safety net
" . . . reform should build on the emerging evidence that community-based approaches can create better care and jobs at lower cost" says Buurtzorg Britain and Ireland's Brendan Martin in this letter of his, which was recently featured in the Financial Times. It...
Ten years on: things I learned by caring for my mum
On this date 10 years ago, at 1.42 in the morning, my mother Betty Martin took her last breath as I held her hand in Lewisham Hospital, south east London. She had taken her first nearly 88 years earlier in Dunmanway, west Cork. I have spent much of the decade since...
‘Tell me about you?’………
Four words that mean so much. Four words we use every day. Four words that can help us to get to know each other. Four words that can break down barriers. Four words that we can shy away from. Four words which we can be frightened of. Four words that can help to...
The butcher, the baker & the candlestick maker & why they mattered!
As I sat having a socially distanced cup of tea with my 75-year-old dad a few weekends ago, we found ourselves talking about his best friend’s mum. I had known her as ‘nanna’ because she had spent a lot of time looking after my dad when he was younger, as his own mum...
Falling through the social care net
Our team at Public World partnered with Buurtzorg to found Buurtzorg Britain and Ireland for a reason: because we believe that the way in which Buurtzorg has transformed care at home in the Netherlands should inspire and inform a much better way of doing things in...
Latest Tweet
Hi Lesley, so good to see you @buurtzorg @communitycare professional in Australia with our @BuurtzorgAU @sdyckerhoff colleagues https://t.co/0oBYvLxdg9
— Gertje van Roessel (@groessel) September 21, 2018
