Hospital waiting times beyond the Treeknorm

42.0%→change: 1y -1.6 pts · 5y — · 10y —as of 2025C source confidenceborn

What this number says

In 2025, 42% of hospital treatments had a reported waiting time above the agreed maximum of six weeks. The share of provider-treatment combinations in specialist medical care whose reported waiting time exceeds the Treeknorm — the maximum the sector itself agreed (6 weeks for treatment, 4 for an outpatient visit or diagnostics). The reported figure is defined by NZa regulation: for treatment it is the median of the collected waiting times (values based on fewer than five observations are suppressed), for an outpatient visit or diagnostics it is the days until the third open slot in the hospital's agenda system. Hospitals must report to the NZa every two weeks since August 2021; RIVM publishes this annual summary. Waiting time is where care shortages become personal: the norm exists because waiting longer is medically and socially costly, and roughly two in five treatments now sit above it.

Hospital waits over the norm — NetherlandsNetherlandsOutpatient visits (4-week norm)Diagnostics (4-week norm)Treatments, voluntary NZa reporting (2019–2020)Treatments, Mediquest collection (2010–2018)

⌇ 2019: Collection moved from Mediquest to NZa (still voluntary) — different provider pool · ⌇ 2021: Reporting mandatory from Aug 2021; 2021 covers Aug–Dec only. The jump from 2020 is mostly the expanded provider pool

Source & method

Source	NZa/RIVM manual:I5
Human page	https://www.vzinfo.nl/prestatie-indicatoren/uitvoering-van-zorg-en-preventie/toegankelijkheid/wachttijden
Licence	NZa WOO waiver (public domain) / RIVM vzinfo publication
Trend method	OLS over last 8 annual observations, 5% significance (MBW convention)
Revisions	None recorded since 2026-07-09. Every retrieval is stored append-only; when the source restates history, the old and new values become comparable here.
Pipeline notes	Verified 9 Jul 2026 from the RIVM vzinfo prestatie-indicator page (embedded chart data; the NZa Zorgbeeld API at zorgbeeld.nza.nl/openapi/WaitingTimeMSZ carries only the current snapshot, not the history). Share of provider-treatment combinations in medisch-specialistische zorg whose reported waiting time exceeds the Treeknorm (behandeling 6 weeks; polikliniek/diagnostiek 4 weeks). Reported figure per NZa regeling NR/REG-2421 art. 1 (read first-hand 17 Jul 2026): behandeling = MEDIAN of rekenkundige wachttijden per treatment (<5 observations suppressed), NOT an average; polikliniek/diagnostiek = days until the third available agenda slot. Headline: behandeling, mandatory era (2021: 42.9% -> 2025: 42.0%); companions: polikliniek and diagnostiek (mandatory era) and the two pre-2021 behandeling regimes. Annual refresh ~February from the same page.

Raw snapshot (JSON) · every observation keeps its retrieval timestamp and revision history in the public database.

Data table — Hospital waits over the norm (Netherlands)

Period	Value
2025	42.0
2024	43.6
2023	46.0
2022	46.2
2021	42.9[b]