Maverick Advocaten responded to the internet consultation on the legislative proposal to amend the Healthcare Market Regulation Act in connection with the expansion of the healthcare-specific merger test of the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa). The full response can be found here.
The proposal will lead to an expansion of the assessment of continuity and quality of care. The proposal also gives the NZa the possibility to assess the legitimacy of care. This will allow the NZa to include irregularities in (financial) business operations in its assessment.
In our response, we argue that, given the lack of concrete standards, the proposed expansion will lead to i) legal uncertainty and ii) a further increase in the administrative burden on healthcare providers and the NZa, which is already high in the healthcare sector. As long as this expansion of the NZa's competences is not accompanied by an expansion of its capacity, it will be at the expense of the NZa's other statutory tasks, which involve assessing the continuity and quality of healthcare (such as the duty of care). For example, the NZa rejected enforcement requests from the Consumers' Association (mental healthcare) and general practitioners (mental healthcare and general practice) regarding the duty of care of health insurance companies in mental healthcare and general practice, arguing that it also has to use its limited capacity for other matters. It is striking that earlier in 2023, the NZa did not investigate all 10 health insurers, but only four, with regard to the duty of care of health insurance companies in mental healthcare. This is particularly striking because the duty of care problem and waiting list problem in mental healthcare does not only affect four insurers. In short, practice already shows that the NZa's enforcement of the duty of care (procurement) is inadequate. All this leads us to argue once again that the healthcare-specific merger test should not be extended but abolished as soon as possible.
We previously wrote a blog about the healthcare-specific merger test.
Follow Maverick Advocaten on LinkedIn
