Table 1.

Features of general practitioner (GP) cooperatives in the Netherlands [1]

Theme	Feature
General	Out-of-hours primary care is provided by large-scale general practitioner (GP) cooperatives
	Participation of 50–250 GPs per cooperative with a mean of 4 hours on call per week
	Circa 125 GP cooperatives in the Netherlands
	Population of 100,000 to 500,000 patients
	Out-of-hours defined as daily from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. and the entire weekend
Location	GP cooperative usually situated in or near a hospital
	Distance of patients to GP cooperative maximally 30 km
Accessibility	Access via a single regional telephone number, meaning the first contact mostly is with a triage nurse (only 5-10% walk in without a call in advance)
	Telephone triage by nurses supervised by GPs: contacts are divided into telephone advice, centre consult, or GP home visit
Facilities	Drivers in identifiable GP cars that are fully equipped (e.g. oxygen, intra venous drip equipment, automated external defibrillator, medication)
	Information and communication technology (ICT) support including electronic patient files, online connection to the GP car, and sometimes connection with the electronic medical record in the GP daily practice