Invest-NL enables results-based financing for preventive care through GelijkGezond

Funding prevention in a new way

GelijkGezond focuses on people in the Netherlands who become stuck due to problems spanning multiple domains, such as health, housing, debts, and employment. Existing systems often fall short for this group because medical and social care are organized separately. This also results in higher healthcare costs as problems become more complex. 

Therefore, GelijkGezond opts for an integrated approach with so-called persistents: professionals who inventory all client questions and assist them in finding and accessing the right help. This helps people regain control over their situation. 

Such an approach benefits not only the individuals but also society. Previous pilots have shown that this method improves quality of life and reduces societal costs. However, scaling up is not straightforward. The benefits often accrue to parties other than those who have to invest upfront. This makes financing complicated.  

Outcome-based financing explained for GelijkGezond

With GelijkGezond, outcome-based financing – an innovative funding model – is implemented on a large scale in practice. Invest-NL helped develop this model for GelijkGezond, assisted in establishing the financing structure, and brought together parties that normally do not automatically enter the same financing setup, including institutional investors, health insurers, and municipalities.  

In this arrangement, investors enable the approach by pre-financing the care provided by persistents. Municipalities and health insurers only reimburse once the pre-agreed societal results are achieved. The approach begins in four municipalities, providing evidence to deploy preventive care more broadly and to scale further. 

From development work to financing

After the development phase, Invest-NL is now also investing directly in implementation with a loan of € 1.5 million. A special step: from a concrete financing need, Invest-NL worked on a bankable proposition, for which it now provides a loan.  

The GelijkGezond initiative demonstrates how Invest-NL works towards making societal transitions financingable. While the market hesitates, Invest-NL helps create momentum by taking risks and mobilizing capital, and investing itself where necessary. This trajectory also shows that outcome-based financing requires tailored solutions in this context and is not yet broadly applicable by default. That is precisely why Invest-NL aims to further develop propositions and conditions that make outcome-based financing more accessible in the coming period. 

Want to learn more about results-based financing?

Read the story 'A look at the bottlenecks - Results-based financing enables care transition'