NMa: rejection of collective scheme is a missed opportunity for the home care industry

At their member meeting held on May 19, 2010, the members of ActiZ, the Dutch trade association and employers' organization for providers of care services, rejected the alternative regulatory scheme for the home care industry, which the Board of the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) and the board of ActiZ earlier agreed upon in April.

This alternative regulatory scheme would have given the industry the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and instead focus on a future of healthy competition and complete freedom of choice for consumers. Now that it has become clear that ActiZ members have dismissed the proposal, the NMa will be continuing its pre-proposal course, which is resuming the investigations of current cases that had been put on hold during the negotiations with ActiZ, as well as tracking down violations of the Dutch Competition Act and fining the violators accordingly. ActiZ chairman Han Noten recently called on the home-care industry to 'get out of combat mode'. By rejecting the alternative regulatory scheme, it is clear that the industry refuses to answer that call. Chairman of the Board of the NMa, Pieter Kalbfleisch reacts: 'This is truly a missed opportunity, even more so because the compensation, which home care providers would have been supposed to pay for their past conduct, would have gone directly back to the care industry itself through a fund for health care innovation. Unfortunately, this plan has fallen through.'


The objective of the alternative regulatory scheme was twofold, which was that health care providers would be able to wipe the slate clean, while at the same time be able to refocus on the future in a swift and efficient way. At the member meeting, it became clear that members were positive towards setting up compliance programs, but that they dismissed the part of the scheme that would have enabled the industry to bury the past. Mr. Kalbfleisch continues: 'I'm disappointed by this outcome, because those two objectives are inextricably intertwined. After all, motivation for the future is in part generated by how one deals with the past. By rejecting those parts of the scheme related to the past, the home care providers have lost their credibility for their pursuit of a clean future.'


ActiZ, the NMa, and another trade association, BTN, had earlier stated, when they announced the alternative regulatory scheme, that they would greatly value broad support for the proposed scheme among the members of both trade associations. The scheme would have only been adopted if the scheme's participants covered 75 per cent of the entire home care industry. Because the ActiZ members have rejected the scheme, who represent a substantial share of home care providers, that threshold can no longer be reached, even if BTN members were to support the scheme.