Update 3 February 2026

Time flies but winter stays. At the time of writing we are again having snowfall and a white world outside. Not too cold and beautiful. As always, there is news to report from the Dutch healthcare sector. In this update we cover:

• The Netherlands has a new government. What are the plans for the health sector?
• Healthtech startup acquired by Swedish company. More European acquisitions to come?
• Absenteeism in Dutch healthcare sector is increasing. What can be done?
• Value of real estate in healthcare sector has fallen sharply. What are the reasons?

The Netherlands has a new government

It took 223 days to agree on the structure of the previous Dutch government (coalition parties, main goals, etc.). This time, even after a difficult election result with the largest party having the smallest number of seats ever, it has taken 69 days to present a new government agreement. The new center-right government consists of three parties with 66 seats in Parliament and will depend on other parties on a case-by-case basis for getting a majority vote.

Two main pillars of the new government are a large growth in spending on defense and a balanced budget. This requires savings in other areas and a key area for this is government spending in the healthcare sector. While the new coalition claims that their suggestions are not “savings” but “reduced growth” in costs, the plans to reduce overall costs by €10 billion will have large consequences for various sub-sectors of the market:

• The largest savings will come from increasing the own-risk (see here for an explanation of how this works) of patients from today’s level of €385/year to €445/ year from 2027 with an ongoing annual indexation. The combined effect of increased payments and reduction in use of certain services is expected to give a saving of €5.7 billion
• Elderly care costs will be reduced by €2 billion through a combination of stopping payments for real estate and other reductions
• Costs for home care (paid by municipalities) will be reduced by €0.5 billion

The new government will also focus on other types of changes such as reducing opportunities for patients to use healthcare providers that do not have contracts with the insurance companies, reducing use of lighter form of mental care and youth care, more focus on prevention, etc. Due to being a minority government, actual changes will be dependent on support from other parties. The leftist GL/PvdA is the biggest opposition party in Parliament, and they have already announced that they will vote against many of the suggested changes. We will keep you updated on changes as they take place.

Healthtech startup acquired by Swedish competitor

Juvoly is a company that was started in 2023 by a software developer and a doctor to develop voice-activated AI solutions for primary care providers (general practitioners). 1.500 practices are customers and 200.000 consultations are transcribed into the EPD every month. In addition to Dutch, the system can also be used in Frisian.

Tandem Health is a Swedish company active in the same area and is already active in several other European markets. The acquisition will help Tandem improve its position in the Dutch market, provide more development capacity and international experience in medical certification. One of the challenges facing European healthtech startups is the small scale of local markets and very different national ecosystems (regulations, financing, etc.). It is therefore interesting to see this type of cross-borders M&A as it will hopefully help European companies deal with these challenges. We will probably be seeing more of this type of deals.

Absenteeism in Dutch healthcare sector is increasing

Absenteeism is a structural problem in the Dutch healthcare sector, and it increased structurally from a level of 6% in 2019 to a record high of 9.85% in early 2022. In May 2024 we described how absenteeism seemed to be declining. A recent report from Vernet (an organization that collects, analyses, and reports on absenteeism in the healthcare sector) highlights that absenteeism is growing again from a low of 7.75% in 2023. In 2024 overall absenteeism in the sector was 7.81% and in 2025 7.97%. The increase in absenteeism is not due to more staff reporting ill, but can be attributed to a growth in long-term absenteeism (between 92 and 730 days).

The 2025 levels are still much lower than the extremely elevated levels of 2022, but are still worrying. Running a healthcare organization with one in twelve staff sick at home results in operational challenges and higher costs. Reducing absenteeism would also help in dealing with the growing challenges of finding and keeping sufficient staff for the sector.

Value of healthcare real estate has fallen sharply

A recent report from ABN Amro analysis the value of real estate in the Dutch nursing home sector. The main conclusion is that the value has had a strong decline. In 2015 the value was €9.86 billion and in 2024 €9.64 billion. Given an inflation in the same period of 30% this results in a major decrease in real terms. According to ABN Amro the decline in value is the result of low investments. This is supported by real estate increasingly getting older (with many nursing home locations having been built in the 1980s), less energy efficient (with 63% of nursing home locations not having an energy label), and less suited to the changing requirements and wishes of the clients.

Due to stricter requirements for getting public funding for nursing home care clients require more and more intense care when entering a nursing home. This requires larger bathrooms and higher investments in technology. In addition, the requirements of clients regarding overall attractiveness of the location and comfort are also increasing (especially if they are paying rental costs out-of-pocket) . This is highlighted by many traditional nursing home providers reporting structural vacancies in their older locations.

While the ABN Amro analysis both under-reports the issues by not considering structurally too low depreciation of real estate in the sector and over-reports the issues by not considering the effects of external investors owning nursing homes, the real estate challenges the sector is facing are real. The tariff that the government pays nursing homes to cover real estate investments and costs has increased by 13% in 2026. Even though the importance of these payments is likely to decrease (see earlier piece on the plans of the new government) this should give nursing home providers the opportunity to either finance investments in new comfortable and energy efficient locations, and/or pay external investors the rents required for such locations.