Government & open data
Inspectie Gezondheidszorg en Jeugd (IGJ)
The Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) is the national inspectorate for care and youth services and sits under the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. It supervises compliance with laws, rules and standards, from mental health care and district nursing to the international market for medicines and medical devices. For legal work, what it publishes is useful mainly as factual material: inspection reports on providers, notices of intensified supervision, information about enforcement measures and the assessment frameworks it applies.
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What this source does not give you
The inspectorate is neither a court nor a disciplinary tribunal: it can lodge a disciplinary complaint, but the disciplinary tribunal assesses that complaint and decides. Not everything is made public. Reports drawn up following notifications about violence in the care relationship, reports following a disciplinary request, and investigations that lead only to a warning are not published.
Frequently asked questions
- Which enforcement interventions can the IGJ use?
- The inspectorate itself lists seven options: a directive, an administrative fine, administrative enforcement, an order, an immediate suspension of professional activities, intensified supervision and a disciplinary complaint. Which one it chooses depends on the severity, the scale and the circumstances: light where the situation allows, compelling where necessary. They are not sequential steps in a fixed order.
- Is an IGJ measure the same as a disciplinary ruling?
- No. The inspectorate acts as an administrative-law supervisor towards care providers and, where the law allows, towards individual professionals. Disciplinary law is a separate procedure with its own tribunals and its own rulings. If the inspectorate lodges a disciplinary complaint, that does not in itself produce a measure: the disciplinary tribunal assesses the complaint and decides. Disciplinary rulings are therefore not found at the inspectorate.
- How long does an inspection report stay online?
- A report remains available in principle for five years after publication. If intensified supervision was imposed or an enforcement measure taken, it stays longer: up to five years after that measure ends. A report you saw earlier and can no longer find may therefore simply have been removed; that in itself says nothing about its content.
- What does the inspectorate publish as standard?
- Reports on care and youth care providers, notices of intensified supervision and information about enforcement measures, in summary form. A provider may submit a response, which is displayed alongside the published documents. What stays unpublished matters just as much: reports following notifications about violence in the care relationship, reports after a disciplinary request, and investigations that end only in a warning.
- Can I see here whether an individual care professional has a measure against them?
- Usually not. The inspectorate's publications are mostly about providers and about its own measures. For disciplinary measures against an individual professional, the Dutch BIG register and the published disciplinary rulings are the appropriate sources. The absence of an entry at the inspectorate therefore does not mean nothing is going on, and vice versa.