secondary care and tertiary care. On this screen you see what is meant by primary care.
Primary care is the care that is directly accessible to the patient. In the Netherlands it contains: general practices, which are the practices of general practitioners or GPs, practices for dental services, practices of midwives and paramedics, suppliers of medicine (for instance pharmacies), practices of specialists that are not attached to a hospital and, last but not least, institutions for social health care which include home care. In this presentation I will pay attention to the general practices and to home care,
(Klik) Secondary care is defined as the care that provides specialist diagnosis and treatment facilities. The settings are hospitals, mental hospitals and institutions for the mentally weak.
From the secondary care I will discuss the hospital care system. The primary and the secondary care are the main part of health care. Aside from these there is the tertiary care. The most well-known part of the tertiary care is the care that is given in nursing homes.
Transmural care is related to this division between primary, secondary and tertiary care. The Dutch Word 'muur', like in 'transmural' means 'wall' in English. 'Transmural' care therefore means: care that is given through the walls of the institutions. In the Neitherlands there used to be a gap between primary and secondary health care. In the last years this is changing. Many transmural initiatives are taken. It means that care is organized that transcends the barriers of the fields, for instance, hospitals that give care in the primary health care sector or: a district nurse that is working within the hospital. I will give you some more information later on on my presentation,
screen 11 (introduction: general principles)
Before talking about the general principles of the Dutch health care system, I would like to
