Why Your Dutch GP Rarely Comes to the House Anymore
Home visits by Dutch GPs have fallen sharply, down about a third between 2017 and 2023 and still declining, driven by rising workload and staff shortages. Experts warn the trend cannot continue.
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The family doctor turning up at your door, bag in hand, was once a familiar part of Dutch healthcare. It is becoming a rarer sight. GPs in the Netherlands make far fewer house calls than they used to, and researchers and doctors warn that the trend is reaching a point where it can no longer continue as it is.
What a huisarts is, and why home visits matter
In the Netherlands, the huisarts, or general practitioner, is the cornerstone of the health system. Almost everyone is registered with one, and the GP is the first point of contact for medical problems and the gatekeeper to hospital and specialist care. Traditionally, that role included visiting patients at home when they were too ill or too frail to come to the practice, which mattered most for older people and those with several long-term conditions.
A steep and continuing decline
The figures show a clear downward trend. According to research by the primary-care institute Nivel, carried out with the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa), the total number of home visits by GPs fell by around 32 percent between 2017 and 2023. The sharpest drop came in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, but visits did not bounce back once restrictions were lifted; they stayed low.
That decline has not levelled off. In its annual primary-care figures, published this year, Nivel found that GPs again made fewer home visits in 2025 than in 2024, continuing a fall that has been visible for years. Both short and longer visits decreased. Home visits go mainly to people aged 75 and over, and it is precisely in that older group that the number has dropped steeply.
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Why it is happening
The main explanation, according to the researchers, is pressure. GP practices are stretched, and a rising workload combined with staff shortages is forcing doctors to make choices about how they spend their time. A home visit takes far longer than a consultation at the surgery, once travel is included, so when time is short, visits are often the first thing to give.
The strain on practices is well documented. In Nivel’s workforce figures, most GP practices report that their doctors experience a high workload, many report shortages of staff such as doctors’ assistants, and a large share have at some point had to close their lists to new patients because they could not cope with demand. At the same time, the population is ageing, and older patients tend to have more, and more complex, health problems, so the underlying need for care is growing rather than shrinking.
The pandemic appears to have accelerated a shift that was already under way. During the lockdowns, many contacts moved to the phone or were handled by a practice assistant, and some of those changes seem to have stuck. Not all of the fall is necessarily a problem: some visits that once happened in person can be dealt with safely by phone or by a practice nurse, and the number of visits for intensive care needs has actually risen, suggesting doctors are concentrating home visits on the most serious cases.
The concern
Even so, there is unease about where the trend leads. The worry is not that GPs are unwilling to visit, but that overstretched practices may find it increasingly hard to reach the people who most need to be seen at home, often older, frail patients with several conditions who cannot easily travel to the surgery. Researchers have flagged that the decline has been uneven, hitting some groups harder than others, and have called for more study of the causes and consequences now that the drop has proved long-lasting.
For patients, the practical picture is that a home visit is now reserved for those who genuinely cannot come in, and that a phone call or an appointment with a practice nurse is more often the first response. For the profession, the deeper question is how to keep looking after a growing number of older people at home with a workforce that is already under sustained strain, a problem that fits into a much wider debate about the future of Dutch healthcare as the population ages.