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
Buurtzorg means ‘neighbourhood care’. But what does that mean?
Over the past seven years Public World (now trading also as Buurtzorg Britain & Ireland) has introduced scores of organisations and hundreds of nurses and other professionals to the Buurtzorg way of working. We’ve also been a partner in the Transforming Integrated...
Solving the workforce crisis requires a new social care vision
A couple of weeks ago I was honoured to speak at a ceremony arranged by the Thistle Foundation in Edinburgh at which certificates were awarded to the first cohort of graduates from the charity’s innovative new Academy. Nine women and men from all sorts of backgrounds...
Let’s make neighbourhoods integrated care systems – without the capital letters
We are delighted to be helping an increasingly diverse range of public service organisations to introduce self-managed team work. In April alone, we worked with: two charities supporting people to live well at home with long-term conditions and learning disabilities,...
Don’t drive Buurtzorg: change at the speed of trust
Did I uncork the champagne on reading Camilla Cavendish’s proposal, in her independent report published last month, that the Buurtzorg model should be “driven out” in adult social care? Surely, as founder and managing director of Buurtzorg Britain & Ireland, I am...
Reflections, hopes & above all, festive greetings to you all!
As the year draws to a close we find ourselves reflecting on the last 12 months, as we did last December, with mixed emotions. We know that work continues to fight COVID, to ramp up the vaccination programme and to address the huge treatment backlog that's grown...
Can you commission friendship?
This year I took part in the 2021 Caring Places Festival, hosted by Buurtzorg Britain and Ireland. The day explored what a caring place can look like, and specifically what the health and care system’s role is in creating caring places. It is already becoming a cliché...
‘People at the heart of care’: how Buurtzorg does it
The UK government yesterday published its “ambitious 10-year vision for how we will transform support and care in England”. We are glad that it presents the Buurtzorg way as an example of how that vision can be realised. The White Paper, People at the Heart of Care,...
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...
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
