Longevity Clinics in the Netherlands

Private longevity clinics in the Netherlands operate under the Wet op het bevolkingsonderzoek, the Population Screening Act, which requires a licence from the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport before cancer screening, screening that uses ionising radiation such as a CT (computed tomography) scan, or screening for serious conditions that cannot be treated or prevented may be offered to the population or to a category of it. RIVM, the national institute for public health and the environment, states the practical effect plainly: doing an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or CT scan as a health test is prohibited here because that licence is required.

What an unlicensed provider can still sell is the part falling outside those categories, which is blood panels, questionnaires and consultation time. The providers sort into a few recognisable kinds: doctor-led private practices built around a long consultation and a wide blood panel, sometimes running alongside an ordinary huisarts (general practitioner) practice; private diagnostic centres offering ultrasound and body composition measurement; single-service outlets offering intravenous vitamin or NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) drips, often attached to an aesthetic clinic; and hormone-focused practices.

One pattern is specific to this country: an operator sells the consultation in the Netherlands and has the radiation-based scan performed abroad. RIVM describes exactly that on its own website, noting that organisations here do offer total body scans outside healthcare and that the scans using radiation then take place in another country.

Everyone who lives or works in the Netherlands must hold basic health insurance under the Zorgverzekeringswet, the Health Insurance Act, and it is the government rather than the insurer that decides what the basic package contains. That package covers care for illness. The national population screening programmes sit outside it, financed directly by the state and offered free of charge, and coordinated by RIVM (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, the national institute for public health and the environment) on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.

Those programmes are narrow: mammography every two years for women aged 50 to 75, a home stool test for bowel cancer for everyone aged 55 to 75, cervical screening, and the prenatal and newborn programmes. Neither the basic package nor the state programmes offers anything to a healthy 45-year-old who wants a broad panel of blood markers, and that deliberate absence is what the private sector sells into.

The gap is a policy, not an oversight. Under the Population Screening Act the minister must refuse a licence if a screening programme is scientifically unsound, if it conflicts with the rules on medical treatment, or if its expected benefit does not outweigh the risks to the people being screened, and the standing population screening committee of the Gezondheidsraad (Health Council) assesses each application against those criteria before the minister decides. A bill to amend the Act in the light of developments in preventive health screening was withdrawn by the State Secretary for Youth, Prevention and Sport on 24 January 2025, leaving the older law in force.

The huisarts, the Dutch general practitioner, is the gatekeeper of the system: outside an emergency, medical specialist care is reimbursed only after a referral from a doctor, and GP care is one of the few things exempt from the eigen risico, the compulsory deductible of 385 euros in 2026 that you pay towards basic-package care before the insurer takes over. Where there is a clinical reason, a symptom, a risk factor or a family history, a huisarts can order blood tests, including glucose and HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin, a measure of average blood sugar), cholesterol, kidney, liver and thyroid markers, and can refer onward for imaging. What a GP will not usually do is order a wide panel simply because you asked, which is the honest reason people pay privately.

Anyone practising as a doctor here must appear in the BIG-register, the public register kept under the Wet BIG (Wet op de beroepen in de individuele gezondheidszorg, the Individual Healthcare Professions Act) by CIBG, the agency that maintains it on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, covering eleven professions including doctor, pharmacist, physiotherapist and nurse. Only a registered professional may use the protected title and independently perform the reserved acts attached to it, and anyone can search the register by name or registration number.

Specialist titles sit in a separate layer, the specialistenregister and profielartsenregister held by the RGS (Registratiecommissie Geneeskundig Specialisten, the registration committee for medical specialists), and there is no recognised Dutch specialism in longevity or age-management medicine - the doctor in front of you is a huisarts, an internist, a radiologist, or a doctor with no specialist title at all.

Products are regulated more tightly than consultations. A medicine needs a marketing authorisation, assessed by the CBG (College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen, the Medicines Evaluation Board) or its European counterpart, before it may be marketed here, though the Geneesmiddelenwet exempts small-scale preparation by or on the instruction of a pharmacist, for dispensing in a pharmacy, from the manufacturing licence requirement. That exemption is the route by which a compounded hormone or peptide preparation can reach a patient without an authorisation of its own.

Human body material is governed separately again: the Wet veiligheid en kwaliteit lichaamsmateriaal, the Safety and Quality of Body Material Act, makes it an offence to obtain, process, preserve, store, distribute, import or export human body material without recognition from the minister.

Oversight of the providers themselves falls to the IGJ (Inspectie Gezondheidszorg en Jeugd, the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate), part of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The Wkkgz (Wet kwaliteit, klachten en geschillen zorg, the Healthcare Quality, Complaints and Disputes Act) obliges any care provider, private clinics included, to deliver what the Act calls safe, effective, efficient and client-centred care, to give you information about what is offered and at what tariff when you ask for it, and to run a written complaints procedure.

Assume you pay the whole bill. The basic package is set nationally and does not fund testing of people without symptoms outside the state programmes, and the aanvullende verzekering, the supplementary policy each insurer sells on its own terms, varies from insurer to insurer, so the only reliable check is the policy wording rather than the clinic's reassurance.

There is a second cost that no quote shows. If a private result comes back abnormal, the follow-up runs through the public system, where the visit to your huisarts, your Dutch general practitioner, is exempt from the eigen risico, the compulsory deductible, but the specialist appointment and any hospital imaging are not.

Two quotes usually differ on four things rather than on quality: whether imaging is included and of what kind; whether a scan is done in-house, bought from a radiology centre, or performed across the border; how much of a doctor's time you actually get as opposed to a technician's; and whether repeat testing and a follow-up consultation sit inside the fee or are billed again later.

Before paying, get in writing which named doctor interprets your results and their number in the BIG-register, the Dutch statutory register of healthcare professionals, whether you receive the raw laboratory and imaging reports rather than a summary, whether a letter goes to your huisarts, and who pays if the clinic recommends a repeat scan.

If any part of the testing happens outside the Netherlands, ask where the records are held, in which language the report is written, and whether an ambiguous finding requires a second trip - a Dutch GP cannot act on a report they cannot obtain or read, and the complaints and disputes route under the Wkkgz, the Dutch healthcare quality and complaints act, covers care provided in the Netherlands.