Paul van der Nat appointed professor of Value-Based Healthcare

Paul van der Nat has been appointed professor of Value-Based Healthcare at Radboud university medical center / Radboud University. He combines this chair with his role as program manager at St. Antonius Hospital in Utrecht/Nieuwegein. He is also a manager of science development at Santeon, the partnership between seven top clinical hospitals, including St. Antonius Hospital.

Value-Based Healthcare means organizing care around the patient, based on the patient's own needs. This requires a different way of working. In his role as program manager at St. Antonius Hospital, Paul van der Nat is concerned with the development and implementation of value-based healthcare in the hospital. To make care future-proof, change is needed: 'We have insufficient insight into the quality and costs of the care we provide, patients experience that the cooperation between various healthcare workers, departments and organizations around patients is not good enough, and we get paid for care in a way that only encourages delivering more care.' 

Quality, accessibility and affordability 

As far as Van der Nat is concerned, it's all about quality, accessibility and affordability of healthcare. Therefore, in the coming years, with his research at the Department IQ healthcare of Radboud university medical center, he will contribute to changes in the organization of care that benefit value-based healthcare. This is fully in line with Radboudumc's ambition to facilitate and realize value-driven work. Van der Nat: ‘Departments are sometimes silos, where healthcare professionals of one and the same patient hardly know each other and each other's work. I want to change that. We need to work and treat patients much more from a perspective of specific medical conditions. This will benefit care.’
 
Van der Nat, who as a professor at Radboudumc also remains affiliated with St. Antonius and Santeon, realizes that these changes demand a lot from healthcare providers. ‘The role of nurses and medical specialists will change, but also that of management positions. We have to think about that carefully. We need to work more in multidisciplinary teams, in order to give patients better care and to prioritize value for the individual patient. That's what I want to focus on in my research.’ 

Healthcare Agreement

His research and field are closely aligned with the Dutch Ministry of Health's Healthcare Agreement. The purpose of this agreement is to keep healthcare of high quality, accessible and affordable for the future, with agreements made between the Ministry of Health and a large number of stakeholders in healthcare. ‘This does show that it is a timely and urgent topic. An important element of value-based healthcare is that we find that it increases the job satisfaction of nurses and medical specialists. This element is not often mentioned, but it should not be underestimated at a time of increasing work pressure and staff shortages.’ 

Career

Van der Nat (Amsterdam, 1978) studied physics at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He received his doctorate for his research entitled “Transversity in two-hadron fragmentation”. He did research at a particle accelerator in Hamburg, in which he investigated the spin structure of protons. He was one of the initiators of Meetbaar Beter, where he worked as manager until the merger with the Netherlands Heart Registration. Since 2012, Van der Nat has worked at St. Antonius Hospital. He has also been research development manager at Santeon, the partnership between seven top clinical hospitals, since 2022. As pioneer in the field of value-based healthcare, he is co-author of the (Dutch) book "Value-Based Healthcare: Dream or Reality?". Van der Nat was appointed professor of Value-Based Healthcare for a three-year term effective December 1, 2022.
 

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