Henk Schers appointed professor of Regional Network Formation of General Practice

Effective 1 March 2021, Henk Schers has been appointed Professor of Regional Network Formation of General Practice at Radboud university medical center/Radboud University. His research focuses on innovations in the collaboration between healthcare providers from inside and outside the hospital. The focus is on the design, feasibility, effectiveness and efficiency of transmural network care.

Henk Schers wants to give transmural network care a boost, particularly in his own region of Nijmegen: "I think this is an important theme for the next decade. Patient care is improving all the time, but it is also expanding all the time. More and more professionals are involved in the care of a single patient. How can we ensure that care is provided in the patient's own environment as much as possible? How do we ensure that the care is not further fragmented, who from the network maintains the overview, how are the tasks distributed?

An important question is also: how long do we continue with care? When is it better to reduce the size of the network? Big questions, which an individual healthcare provider can rarely answer, but for which networking and relevant research on patient experiences, effectiveness and efficiency are necessary. In addition to personal networking for individual patients, networking between hospitals, GPs, home care, and other organizations is increasingly important. They will increasingly have to act together as a network. I want to stimulate that development."

Henk Schers focuses primarily on medical professionals in his research on networking. In recent years, for example, he has conducted research into new forms of network care for the frail elderly, patients with osteoarthritis, patients with oncological conditions and palliative care. As head of the Radboud Technology Center Health Data, he makes extensive use of data collected in the large GP network of the Department of Primary and Community Care for research.

Henk Schers (1964, Broekhuizen) studied medicine at the University of Nijmegen, where he obtained his doctorate in 2004 on continuity of care (title dissertation: Continuity of Care in General Practice. The balance between personal and informational continuity). He then served as a GP researcher, was appointed Principal Clinician, and is currently unit head of patient care in the Department of Primary Care Medicine. He also works as a general practitioner in the academic health center Thermion in Lent. He is chairman of the Council of the Dutch College of General Practitioners, and of the network Regio Nijmegen op Eén Lijn , which aims to improve and strengthen healthcare in the Nijmegen region. 

• Want to know more about these subjects? Click on the buttons below for more news.

  Primary and Community Care News homepage news & media