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Expats are in good hands in Belgium, which has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Here is our updated guide.Belgian Healthcare
You can be assured of the highest-quality medical care in Belgium, regarded as among the best healthcare systems in Europe. As in most countries, the system divides itself into state and private, though fees are payable in both, so you need to ensure that you are adequately covered through either the state insurance and/or private insurance. The advantages of the state mutuelle/mutualiteit scheme is that you can choose any doctor, clinic or hospital you like, in any location and without referral, according to your needs in much the same way as you can with private insurance.
Doctors
General practitioners can be found in private practices or attached to clinics and hospitals and you are free to consult or register with any you like. Similarly with specialist consultants. It may be a decision based on location, language or recommendation. It's always worth speaking to neighbours or colleagues when you first arrive; everyone knows of a doctor, or has heard of one with a good reputation. Also try asking on the expatica.com forums. Embassies usually keep lists of doctors who can work in your language, though it has to be said that most doctors have a good understanding of English.The majority of dentists in Belgium are private, though there are those who accept part-payment on state insurance. Make it a priority to check when registering as the fee differentials can be huge. For any specialist work, such as crowns and bridges, the dentist may well ask how you will pay and offer you different quotations. To qualify for health insurance reimbursement you'll need to visit the dentist at least once a year. In the big cities, Brussels in particular, there are international dentistry practices , though they can be considerably more expensive.
As with general practitioners, you can arrange to see a specialist of your choice at any hospital. You can also walk into an emergency outpatients for immediate treatment, though as in other countries, do not use this as a GP replacement. You should remember to have your insurance card or other identifiable means of payment with you, though emergency treatment will not be refused if you don't. If you’re going into hospital for a stay, take everything you need – towel and soap included - as nothing is provided. In Brussels the eleven big public hospitals are organised under the Iris association (www.iris-hopitaux.be)
Alternative healthcare
The Ministry of Health recognises homeopathy, acupuncture, osteopathy and chiropractic as reimbursable alternative treatments. The cost will only be covered, however, if the practitioner is registered as a qualified doctor, so check before treatment otherwise you will be liable for the full cost of treatment.
Emergency treatment
If you need to use the emergency 100 or 112 number, an ambulance will arrive quickly and take you to the nearest emergency centre. Sometimes, a decision may be made to admit you to the best centre suited for your needs, for example, a specialist burns unit.
Pharmacies
Chemists are ubiquitous in Belgium, with the green cross sign everywhere.
There is a rota system for chemists to open outside of usual hours and through the night. Lists are available from any pharmacy or check newspapers for those open at night in your area.
Insurance
Healthcare insurance is a part of the Belgian social security system and to benefit you must join a health insurance fund mutuelle (mutualité) or ziekenfonds (mutualiteit).
Once you are employed by a Belgian company, your contributions and those of your employer will be automatically deducted from your salary by the National Office for Social Security.
Then you sign up with a health insurance fund, which will reimburse your medical costs. To take you on, they will need a written certification of employment signed by your employer.
You are free to choose any company you want. Although most of them are affiliated to a religious or political institution, there is no real difference because reimbursement rates are fixed by the Belgian government.
These funds do not, however, cover 100 percent of your bills; you may be compensated for about half to three-quarters of a typical doctors or specialists visit.
Check also with your doctor that what he or she prescribes is refundable. Pharmacies maintain a government-advised list.
Consequently many people opt for additional private insurance (complémentaire).
Once insured you get a standardised credit card style SIS card which you will need in pharmacies and hospitals. You also get a sheet of Dickensian stickers (vignettes) which you need to attach to a doctor's bill to get a refund.
Expatica - Updated 2009
Really??? One of the best in the world???
http://www.expatica.com/be/articles/news/Belgian-healthcare-in-12th-place.html
Well, it encounters suicides. That has little to do with healthcare. It also states that healthcare is better in the netherlands, well you can say that to someone who couldn't be done for surgery because the doctor leaves at 5pm.
We moved to Hasselt, from Canada, 4 years ago.
There is absolutely no question the health care system here is far and away superior.
No waiting for a Dr.s appointment. Scans, X Rays as needed and promptly done. Reference to specialists as needed and/or requested! Friendly practitioners, nurses, hospital staff. Leading edge techniques/procedures.
In our case we pay for the health coverage but it would be a bargain at many times the price.
The "socialist" system, or gov't funded plans do not work!
I don't mind private healthcare clinics as long as they're "non-profit". Greedy right wing doctors only see dollar signs not their obligations to administer help regardless of income level. True, Canada has socialized healthcare..which means everyone is covered from the homeless to multi-millionaires...it's called a truely democractic healthcare system...because life is sacred.
The Americans will eventually have full universal healthcare...they already have a socialized pension system, socialized education system, and socialized fire and police departments. This has not lead America to communism as the right wing coporate media states all the time! Watch Star Trek...capitalism no longer exists! True democracy will only exist once we rid ourselves of the monetary system!
No question: Canadian healthcare system shames the Belgian one in its comprehensive care for every person. The Belgian system is unneccessarily administratively dense. (Why the stickers?) We moved to LLN from Vancouver--I'll take my Vancouver GP's any day...
The health care system in Belgium is extremely poor in my opinion, that is, you get very little for what you pay. Consider that every employee pays 13% of his gross salary directly to state health care. Then you pay another 60 EUR/year to the "mutualite". In addition, you pay a considerable amount for each and every time you see a doctor. Plus, you pay for the medicine you need, because virtually no medicine is covered by the insurance. After you paid so much money, you would expect something in return, like an efficient system that doesn't make you suffer needlessly - but this is not the case. Often you wait months for an appointment with certain specialists.
I have a friend who lives in the UK.
She told me she has terrible back pains.
She informed on getting an appointment with her GP.
That would take her 8 days !
If I had the same issue here in Belgium, I'd go to my GP this evening between 5pm and 7pm.
I might have to wait an hour in the waiting room, but I'd be served the same day.
So yes, we might pay a lot of our wage to social security, but it is of a certain high quality, and I wouldn't trade for the system they had in the US, where people would pay a fortune because there wasn't any state-organised system.
Six weeks ago I had a miscarriage and my gynecologist did me a curetage. A week later I started bleeding heavyly and I went to emergency. Rest placenta was detected due to incompletely made operation. Till now everything normal. Even the best doctors are nor perfect and complications can happen in every operation. My disapointment was the follow up after the diagnosys of poorly made curetage: my doctor called me 3 times for appointment and told me I have a septum in my uterus. she sent to me to a hysteroscopy for which i had to wait 2 weeks for an appointment. the outcome of histeroskopy was only to confirm that there is rest placenta. only 3 weeks later she asked me again to have another appointment with her and maybe to schedule an operation(!). at this point i was fed up and i bought a plane ticket for my country(turkey) where i had rest placenta removal operation the next day. my doctor in turkey could see already by ultrasound that i have no septum and he confirmed that by hysteroscopy. he also gave me the DVD of my placenta removal operation. my both belgian doctors were
known to be very good by the way(one of them professor). i dont think i
will go again for any kind of operation or birth to a belgian hospital.
Also my practitioner in Belgium told me that i dont need to schedule any appointment with a gynecologist until i am 3 months pregnant(!) and nothing can be seen on ultrasound until the baby is 3 months big. I wonder how he was entitled to become a doctor at all.
The Belgian healthcare is poop. I know it from experience. The qualifications of most doctors is low and the equipment looks as if it was stolen from a third world country.
I have a friend who lives in the UK.
She told me she has terrible back pains.
She informed on getting an appointment with her GP.
That would take her 8 days !
If I had the same issue here in Belgium, I'd go to my GP this evening between 5pm and 7pm.
I might have to wait an hour in the waiting room, but I'd be served the same day.
So yes, we might pay a lot of our wage to social security, but it is of a certain high quality, and I wouldn't trade for the system they had in the US, where people would pay a fortune because there wasn't any state-organised system.<a href="http://mutuelle-en-france.net">Mutuelle</a>
Can anyone suggest a good homeopathic doctor in Brussels?
I would be really grateful to avoid experimenting around.
Studies like this are also made on http://www.mutuelle.com, ti should be interesting to extract them to begin studies by country.
Anyone that would state that Belgium has one of the best healthcare systems in the world is one of the following: 1) horribly misguided, 2) has never left the country, 3) is being paid a lot of money to state such lies.
My fiance has 3 separate conditions that are all easily treatable, IF you have doctors that are willing to collaborate with other doctors that know more than they do (which is common in the US, where I'm from). To give you an example of how doctors behave here, I will describe two different scenarios.
First, we went to a doctor in Leuven who was considered to be one of the best orthopedists in Belgium. My fiance has an issue with sensitive skin after hundreds of skin grafts (I still shake my head that this was their method of treating her), she has chronic osteomyletis, and a wrist that needs to be replaced due to the surgery that preceded her development of osteomyletis, though doctors here refuse to admit that refusing to admit her wound would close could lead to chronic bone infection if left untreated for a month (yeah, they refused to treat an open wound that wasn't healing, rejecting the pins they put in, claiming it would get better on its own until it was gaping many centimeters open and bone was clearly exposed).
I explained to this doctor in Leuven what an American doctor had told me regarding her case and at first, he was willing to help. At the end, he turned us away, telling us to stop seeking cosmetic surgery for a hand that would never look normal again (we had made it clear that ending pain was the goal - we are rational people and know quite well that her hand will always look like it has healed from a massive burn).
Later, we went to another doctor in Liege. She was told to see a dermatologist (after a mild chemical spilled on her hand and was causing the skin to become necrotic) and that there was nothing they could do to treat her.
The next day, we went to the Military Hospital's burn unit, in Brussels. I explained how I had discussed her case with around a dozen researchers and doctors that handle wound healing. We had been out of the country for a treatment that worked and this doctor said, "Yes, people come to me all the time hoping for a treatment for autism or cerebral palsy and I have to turn them away because while they could pay for the treatment, it would be unethical for me to take their money, knowing it doesn't work." This explanation after he had insulted my fiance, basically accusing her of not taking her healthcare seriously.
I explained that we were not there for disability, but for wound healing because her skin was too weak to heal itself after so many grafts. He assured me that all of the research I had done was pointless, capitalism had no place in medicine (which is why he has no incentive to improve upon his skills - his income is not based upon how much education her receives or how well he performs - so yes, I see that the absence of capitalism in medicine is working here.) and to please send him all of the information I have so he can review it. I didn't waste my time.
Bottom line - if you have a common cold - great healthcare system. If you need surgery, leave the country. I've heard so many stories of botched surgeries, performed on the wrong body part, no improvement in symptoms, doctors that don't offer proper follow up care - it's frightening here.
Frankly, if I had to have emergency surgery? I'd suffer for 10 hours on a flight back to the States and risk dying on the plane. Better than the alternative - a botched surgery leaving me in debilitating pain for the rest of my life and doctors refusing to do anything about it.
Sorry, that was 4 scenarios. Almost every hospital in Belgium has made irreversible mistakes with my fiance, and refuses to take responsibility for it. So, we really know what we're talking about.
@Filiep
A system that doesn't provide quality healthcare (or, in our experience, DAMAGING healthcare) is not a better value just because you pay less for it. I agree that health insurance in the US is extremely expensive, but I'll gladly pay a premium for doctors I can count on to make me better, rather than worry that they will most likely make me worse.
Really??? One of the best in the world???
http://www.expatica.com/be/articles/news/Belgian-healthcare-in-12th-place.html
Well, it encounters suicides. That has little to do with healthcare. It also states that healthcare is better in the netherlands, well you can say that to someone who couldn't be done for surgery because the doctor leaves at 5pm.
We moved to Hasselt, from Canada, 4 years ago.
There is absolutely no question the health care system here is far and away superior.
No waiting for a Dr.s appointment. Scans, X Rays as needed and promptly done. Reference to specialists as needed and/or requested! Friendly practitioners, nurses, hospital staff. Leading edge techniques/procedures.
In our case we pay for the health coverage but it would be a bargain at many times the price.
The "socialist" system, or gov't funded plans do not work!
I don't mind private healthcare clinics as long as they're "non-profit". Greedy right wing doctors only see dollar signs not their obligations to administer help regardless of income level. True, Canada has socialized healthcare..which means everyone is covered from the homeless to multi-millionaires...it's called a truely democractic healthcare system...because life is sacred.
The Americans will eventually have full universal healthcare...they already have a socialized pension system, socialized education system, and socialized fire and police departments. This has not lead America to communism as the right wing coporate media states all the time! Watch Star Trek...capitalism no longer exists! True democracy will only exist once we rid ourselves of the monetary system!
No question: Canadian healthcare system shames the Belgian one in its comprehensive care for every person. The Belgian system is unneccessarily administratively dense. (Why the stickers?) We moved to LLN from Vancouver--I'll take my Vancouver GP's any day...
The health care system in Belgium is extremely poor in my opinion, that is, you get very little for what you pay. Consider that every employee pays 13% of his gross salary directly to state health care. Then you pay another 60 EUR/year to the "mutualite". In addition, you pay a considerable amount for each and every time you see a doctor. Plus, you pay for the medicine you need, because virtually no medicine is covered by the insurance. After you paid so much money, you would expect something in return, like an efficient system that doesn't make you suffer needlessly - but this is not the case. Often you wait months for an appointment with certain specialists.
I have a friend who lives in the UK.
She told me she has terrible back pains.
She informed on getting an appointment with her GP.
That would take her 8 days !
If I had the same issue here in Belgium, I'd go to my GP this evening between 5pm and 7pm.
I might have to wait an hour in the waiting room, but I'd be served the same day.
So yes, we might pay a lot of our wage to social security, but it is of a certain high quality, and I wouldn't trade for the system they had in the US, where people would pay a fortune because there wasn't any state-organised system.
Six weeks ago I had a miscarriage and my gynecologist did me a curetage. A week later I started bleeding heavyly and I went to emergency. Rest placenta was detected due to incompletely made operation. Till now everything normal. Even the best doctors are nor perfect and complications can happen in every operation. My disapointment was the follow up after the diagnosys of poorly made curetage: my doctor called me 3 times for appointment and told me I have a septum in my uterus. she sent to me to a hysteroscopy for which i had to wait 2 weeks for an appointment. the outcome of histeroskopy was only to confirm that there is rest placenta. only 3 weeks later she asked me again to have another appointment with her and maybe to schedule an operation(!). at this point i was fed up and i bought a plane ticket for my country(turkey) where i had rest placenta removal operation the next day. my doctor in turkey could see already by ultrasound that i have no septum and he confirmed that by hysteroscopy. he also gave me the DVD of my placenta removal operation. my both belgian doctors were
known to be very good by the way(one of them professor). i dont think i
will go again for any kind of operation or birth to a belgian hospital.
Also my practitioner in Belgium told me that i dont need to schedule any appointment with a gynecologist until i am 3 months pregnant(!) and nothing can be seen on ultrasound until the baby is 3 months big. I wonder how he was entitled to become a doctor at all.
The Belgian healthcare is poop. I know it from experience. The qualifications of most doctors is low and the equipment looks as if it was stolen from a third world country.
I have a friend who lives in the UK.
She told me she has terrible back pains.
She informed on getting an appointment with her GP.
That would take her 8 days !
If I had the same issue here in Belgium, I'd go to my GP this evening between 5pm and 7pm.
I might have to wait an hour in the waiting room, but I'd be served the same day.
So yes, we might pay a lot of our wage to social security, but it is of a certain high quality, and I wouldn't trade for the system they had in the US, where people would pay a fortune because there wasn't any state-organised system.<a href="http://mutuelle-en-france.net">Mutuelle</a>
Can anyone suggest a good homeopathic doctor in Brussels?
I would be really grateful to avoid experimenting around.
Studies like this are also made on http://www.mutuelle.com, ti should be interesting to extract them to begin studies by country.
Anyone that would state that Belgium has one of the best healthcare systems in the world is one of the following: 1) horribly misguided, 2) has never left the country, 3) is being paid a lot of money to state such lies.
My fiance has 3 separate conditions that are all easily treatable, IF you have doctors that are willing to collaborate with other doctors that know more than they do (which is common in the US, where I'm from). To give you an example of how doctors behave here, I will describe two different scenarios.
First, we went to a doctor in Leuven who was considered to be one of the best orthopedists in Belgium. My fiance has an issue with sensitive skin after hundreds of skin grafts (I still shake my head that this was their method of treating her), she has chronic osteomyletis, and a wrist that needs to be replaced due to the surgery that preceded her development of osteomyletis, though doctors here refuse to admit that refusing to admit her wound would close could lead to chronic bone infection if left untreated for a month (yeah, they refused to treat an open wound that wasn't healing, rejecting the pins they put in, claiming it would get better on its own until it was gaping many centimeters open and bone was clearly exposed).
I explained to this doctor in Leuven what an American doctor had told me regarding her case and at first, he was willing to help. At the end, he turned us away, telling us to stop seeking cosmetic surgery for a hand that would never look normal again (we had made it clear that ending pain was the goal - we are rational people and know quite well that her hand will always look like it has healed from a massive burn).
Later, we went to another doctor in Liege. She was told to see a dermatologist (after a mild chemical spilled on her hand and was causing the skin to become necrotic) and that there was nothing they could do to treat her.
The next day, we went to the Military Hospital's burn unit, in Brussels. I explained how I had discussed her case with around a dozen researchers and doctors that handle wound healing. We had been out of the country for a treatment that worked and this doctor said, "Yes, people come to me all the time hoping for a treatment for autism or cerebral palsy and I have to turn them away because while they could pay for the treatment, it would be unethical for me to take their money, knowing it doesn't work." This explanation after he had insulted my fiance, basically accusing her of not taking her healthcare seriously.
I explained that we were not there for disability, but for wound healing because her skin was too weak to heal itself after so many grafts. He assured me that all of the research I had done was pointless, capitalism had no place in medicine (which is why he has no incentive to improve upon his skills - his income is not based upon how much education her receives or how well he performs - so yes, I see that the absence of capitalism in medicine is working here.) and to please send him all of the information I have so he can review it. I didn't waste my time.
Bottom line - if you have a common cold - great healthcare system. If you need surgery, leave the country. I've heard so many stories of botched surgeries, performed on the wrong body part, no improvement in symptoms, doctors that don't offer proper follow up care - it's frightening here.
Frankly, if I had to have emergency surgery? I'd suffer for 10 hours on a flight back to the States and risk dying on the plane. Better than the alternative - a botched surgery leaving me in debilitating pain for the rest of my life and doctors refusing to do anything about it.
Sorry, that was 4 scenarios. Almost every hospital in Belgium has made irreversible mistakes with my fiance, and refuses to take responsibility for it. So, we really know what we're talking about.
@Filiep
A system that doesn't provide quality healthcare (or, in our experience, DAMAGING healthcare) is not a better value just because you pay less for it. I agree that health insurance in the US is extremely expensive, but I'll gladly pay a premium for doctors I can count on to make me better, rather than worry that they will most likely make me worse.
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