Hospitals on Tuesday began publishing data about the quality of the care they offer on their websites so that patients can compare different institutions.

The information covers ten categories ranging from waiting times and death rates to patient experience and the risk of infections.

The initiative comes from the Dutch hospitals’ association NVZ and nearly all hospitals are taking part.

Inspectors

Most of the data is already available, according to the Volkskrant. For instance, death rates and the number of high-risk operations carried out are already given to supervisors such as the health service inspectorate.

However, patient experience are being published for the first time. These figures come from internal surveys, but the NVZ says they can be trusted. ‘Hospitals want their care to constantly improve and that can only happen if they collect correct and reliable data,’ the organisation told the Volkskrant.

At the moment, the information concerns healthcare in general, but there are plans to publish individual data for illnesses and for specialisms.