The health ministry inspectorate IGZ undertook more inspections of hospitals in 2013, many of them unannounced, according to the organisation’s annual report on Monday.

Inspectors made three times as many inspections in 2013 compared with 2012. Of the 3,159 visits last year, 1,378 were unannounced.

Last year, hospitals were put under stronger supervision 29 times, compared with 19 times in 2012. An improvement order was given in 36 cases, compared with 15 in 2012, and the number of warnings rose from 59 to 142 last year.

Excellent

The figures do not indicate that Dutch healthcare has become worse, an IGZ spokesman told news agency Novum. In general, Dutch hospitals do excellent work. ‘But we inspect places where we know or suspect there are risks more often than in the past,’ he said. ‘This means we find problems more often.’

The decision to make an inspection is often based on information from patients or from healthcare workers, according to the IGZ. ‘But sometimes we make a visit based on a newspaper article where no report has come in,’ the spokesman told Novum.

There were 9,650 reports logged in 2013, compared to over 10,000 a year earlier.