Many psychiatrists feel pressured to share confidential patient data with the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa). So says psychiatrist Cobie Groenendijk, a member of the action group ‘Confidence in mental health care’, which is taking the NZa to court at the end of September.
‘They experience a conflict of duties because they have to breach their professional secrecy, while the NZa threatens a penalty if they fail to do so. The NZa does not say anything about how high the penalty is, and that creates uncertainty,’ says Groenendijk. Groenendijk points, among other things, to a survey conducted by the Department of Independently Established Psychiatrists, which showed that 83 percent of the 203 independent psychiatrists who completed it believe that sharing questionnaires and other data with the NZa is at odds with medical confidentiality. A nuance is that the survey was conducted at the end of 2022, even before the Dutch Data Protection Authority had approved the NZa’s plan. Partly in response to a request from the NVvP, the Dutch Data Protection Authority has imposed additional conditions on the NZa and the AP only then approved the request, the NVvP reports when asked. Groenendijk regrets that the association of psychiatrists, the NVvP, does not support the lawsuit, while so many psychiatrists have objections. ‘There is dissatisfaction within the association about how the board approaches this, because we as members have not been consulted about this.’
The spokesman for the NVvP says that no member poll has indeed been held. The position of the NVvP was established together with the twenty-member council of members. Furthermore, since August 31, the NVvP has stated the following position on their site: ‘We know that some of our members, psychiatrists, are concerned about the security of supplied data and the trust that the patient retains in the practitioner if he is obliged to provide data. share, even if that data is pseudonymised. We regret that. Trust is fundamental to our profession and a lack of trust is a serious issue. As a result, we have asked our NVvP Committee on Laws and Regulations to advise the NVvP board on how to deal with patient data in the future. This advisory process could eventually lead to a sharpening of our point of view.’
‘Confidence in mental health care’ is a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health care clients and a number of organizations such as the Civil Rights Platform, supported by various social, professional and patient organisations. With a lawsuit against the NZa, the group wants to put a stop to the mandatory provision of patient data that are processed pseudo-anonymously.
