Your huisarts (GP) in the Netherlands: register before you are ill, because specialists, hospitals and prescriptions all start there

In the Netherlands, almost all medical care starts at one doctor: the huisarts (GP, family doctor). You do not book a specialist or walk into a hospital yourself. The huisarts treats you first and refers you when specialist care is needed. Without that referral, your insurer can refuse to pay the specialist's bill. So everyone who lives here needs a huisarts, and many practices are full. Register in your first weeks, while you are healthy. This guide explains what the huisarts does, how to find and register with a practice, what a consult is like, how referrals and prescriptions work, where to go in the evening and weekend, and what to do when every practice near you says no.

The huisarts is your first point of contact for both your physical and your mental health. GPs in the Netherlands handle far more than you may expect: they treat ongoing conditions such as diabetes and asthma, stitch wounds, do standard gynaecological and paediatric examinations, test for STIs, give the flu vaccine, and help with problems such as feeling down, stress or loneliness after moving countries. The huisarts also keeps your medical record and coordinates all care around you. Thuisarts, the patient site of the Dutch college of GPs, describes this system in plain English.

The huisarts is also the gate to the rest of the system. You cannot visit a medical specialist in a hospital without a referral from your huisarts. The rule comes from your insurance: without a referral letter (verwijsbrief), the insurer can refuse to pay for the treatment, and you cannot send in the bill afterwards. The only exception is urgent specialist care after an accident or a sudden serious illness. So the practical order is fixed: huisarts first, everything else after.

Three kinds of care sit outside the huisarts system: dental care, physiotherapy and maternity care. You arrange those with a dentist, physiotherapist or midwife, and for physiotherapists and several other paramedics no referral is needed. Whether basic insurance pays for them is a separate question; see what Dutch health insurance does not cover.

Search online for 'huisarts' plus your town or postcode, and check the websites of the practices near you. You are free to choose your own huisarts, and free to change later. A practice may still refuse you, for four reasons: it is not accepting new patients (a patiëntenstop), you live too far away, the GP cannot agree to specific care wishes, or your insurer has no contract with that practice. Distance is a lawful reason for refusal, so pick a practice close to home.

Registering is simple when the practice has room. You fill in a registration form with your ID, your BSN and your health-insurance details (insurer name and policy number). Showing ID is a legal requirement in Dutch healthcare, from birth, and the practice records your BSN; a passport, ID card or Dutch residence document all work. Most practices will also schedule an introductory appointment (kennismakingsgesprek). Use it: bring any medical records you have from your home country and a list of the medicines you take, so your new file starts complete. If you move within the Netherlands later, your old huisarts sends your record to the new one, with your approval.

GP practices are open on weekdays from 8:00 to 17:00. You call the practice, and the doktersassistent (GP assistant) answers. The assistant will ask what your call is about and then ask follow-up questions. This is triage, not curiosity: the answers decide how urgent your situation is, whether you see the GP or the practice nurse, and how much can be handled with advice on the phone. The assistant is a medical professional with a duty of confidentiality, so describe your symptoms as they are. Do not make them bigger or smaller. A growing number of practices also offer e-consults, where you send your question through a secure online environment, and some GPs have telephone consultation hours.

A consultation with the GP generally takes 10 to 15 minutes. That is enough for one problem, not for four. If you have several questions or a complicated story, say so when you book and ask for a longer appointment of 20 or 30 minutes. Prepare at home: write your questions down, bring your medication list, and mention allergies and recent travel abroad. You may bring someone with you; together you remember more. In the consult, three questions help you get a clear plan: What are my options? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option? What do they mean in my situation?

Expect fewer prescriptions than you may be used to. Dutch doctors prescribe antibiotics and other medication less readily, and for minor illnesses such as a sore throat or a common cold the normal advice is to wait and let the body recover. Leaving with a diagnosis, clear advice and no medicine is a normal outcome of a Dutch consult, not a failed one.

When your problem needs a specialist, the huisarts writes the referral. The huisarts decides whether a referral is medically useful. A GP who is convinced a referral will not help you may refuse it, and must explain why. If you go to a specialist on your own, without a referral, you risk paying the full bill yourself. Once referred, the specialist's care is paid from your basic insurance, but it does count toward your eigen risico (the deductible: the first €385 of most care in 2026 is your own cost). The eigen risico guide explains how that deductible works.

Mental-health care follows the same rule. The huisarts treats lighter psychological problems in the practice, together with a POH-GGZ (a mental-health practice nurse), and refers you to GGZ providers for specialised mental-health care. So the appointment for a mental-health problem also starts with a call to your own practice.

Prescriptions also run through the huisarts. Most medication in the Netherlands is not freely available and requires a GP prescription, which you collect at a pharmacy (apotheek). For medicines you use long-term, ask your practice at registration how to request repeat prescriptions (herhaalrecepten), so a refill does not need a new appointment later. Watch the costs: the consult with your huisarts is free for you, but medicines the GP prescribes and tests the GP orders, such as blood tests, do count toward the eigen risico.

Outside office hours, urgent GP care moves to the huisartsenpost (out-of-hours GP service, also called huisartsenspoedpost). It is for problems that cannot wait until the next working day: a high fever in a small child on Saturday, a wound that may need stitches at night. You find the phone number of your regional post on your own practice's website or on its answering machine. Call first; the post's triage decides whether you come in. Do not drive to the hospital's emergency department (spoedeisende hulp, SEH) on your own: the official rule is to contact the huisartsenpost first, and the post sends you to the SEH when needed. The exception is a life-threatening situation. Then you call 112 immediately, day or night.

The route you take also decides what you pay. Care at the huisartsenpost is huisarts care: fully reimbursed, no eigen risico. A visit to the SEH is hospital care, and your eigen risico applies to it. In a mental-health crisis, contact your huisarts during office hours or the huisartsenpost outside them. With thoughts of suicide, 113 Suicide Prevention is free on 113, with a 24-hour chat, also in English.

Basic health insurance (basisverzekering), which everyone living or working in the Netherlands must have, pays for huisarts care in full. A visit to the huisarts never counts toward your eigen risico: GP care is on the list of care that the government keeps outside the deductible. Care that starts from the huisarts can still cost you money further down the chain:

One check is worth doing when you register: whether the practice has a contract with your insurer. Without a contract you may have to pay a personal contribution for GP care. If you do not have Dutch insurance yet, a practice can ask you to pay for the visit directly by card; arranging the mandatory insurance is covered in the health insurance guide.

This is a national shortage, not something you did wrong. In 2024, 59% of GP practices reported a full or partial patient stop at some point, and between 45,000 and 194,000 people in the Netherlands have no GP registration. Two facts from that same research help you: practice websites often do not show the real acceptance status, and many stops are partial. So call every practice in your area and explain your situation, even when the website says 'no new patients'. A partial stop can still have room for people in your postcode.

If calling around fails, use the escalation route described by SKGZ, the independent body for health-insurance complaints. Call your health insurer and ask it to find you a huisarts. This is not a favour: insurers have contracts with GPs and the duty to help you find one. It can happen that even the insurer finds nothing nearby; keep the case open and ask them to keep searching. You can also ask your gemeente (municipality) for a cliëntondersteuner, a client supporter who helps you arrange care. And if one specific practice refuses you without a good reason, raise it with your insurer or with the regional Adviespunt Zorgbelang.

You can still be seen. Call a practice nearby and ask for a one-time consult as a passant (walk-in patient). The Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) allows practices to charge a passant rate for incidental and acute care of people who are not registered there. You may have to pay this bill at the desk; huisarts care is covered by basic insurance, so send the bill to your insurer. Outside office hours, the huisartsenpost also helps people who are not registered with any practice; SKGZ points people without a huisarts to it for urgent situations. In a life-threatening situation, call 112.

Practices ask for a BSN and insurance details because healthcare providers must record your BSN and check your ID. If you just arrived and have neither, solve the underlying two first: your BSN comes from registering at the gemeente (see the BSN registration guide), and you have 4 months to take out Dutch health insurance, with the policy backdated to the date your insurance obligation started (see the health insurance guide). For care that cannot wait in the meantime, use the passant route above and expect to pay by card first. Keep every invoice, and once your policy starts, ask the insurer which costs from the backdated period it reimburses.

Three things make consults work in English. First, prepare: write down your symptoms and your questions in advance, so the 10 minutes are not lost to searching for words. Second, bring someone who speaks Dutch or strong English; two people remember and translate more than one. Third, use the English pages of Thuisarts, linked earlier in this guide: they explain visits, costs and emergencies, and reading about your symptom before the visit gives you the vocabulary for it. When you register, ask the practice how it handles consultations in English, so you know before you need one.

Many newcomers leave their first Dutch consult with no test, no medicine, and advice to come back if it gets worse. This is usually not neglect. Dutch GPs deliberately hold back on medication, and watchful waiting is the standard first step for minor illness. But you do not have to accept advice you find unclear. Say directly what you are afraid of and what you expected, for example a test or a referral. Ask what the GP expects to happen, and after how many days you should return if it does not. Ask the three questions from the consult section. A huisarts who refuses a referral must be able to explain why. If symptoms change or get worse, call again; new symptoms are new information, and triage treats them that way. And if you structurally do not trust your huisarts, you are free to switch to another practice: registration is your choice, and your record moves with your approval.

Once your huisarts registration is settled, two related guides cover the money side: the eigen risico guide explains the deductible your referrals and prescriptions count toward, and what Dutch health insurance does not cover covers the gaps such as dental care and physiotherapy. For the full arrival sequence, see the first 90 days checklist.