Alumnus testimonial
Jetty Kok - Trainee in Healthcare Procurement at Zilveren Kruis
During the Master’s specialisation Health and Society you research diverse aspects of health and health promotion. I’m interested in combining different perspectives in order to solve social challenges. I become enthusiastic when working on a common goal with parties with diverse interests. I applied to Zilveren Kruis for an internship. In the world of health insurance, both public and private parties are active. All of these parties face a social challenge: keeping accessible and qualitatively good healthcare affordable. Because of both this challenge plus the enjoyable atmosphere at work, I wanted to continue at Zilveren Kruis after my internship.
The broad base of my Master’s was very useful in helping me to be able to work on different projects and to devise integral solutions
I applied for and was accepted as a trainee in Healthcare Procurement. The traineeship consists of four projects, each lasting for six months. During my first project I gained knowledge of the policy aspects involved in procuring healthcare. Together with a team of purchasers, medical consultants, analysts and claims specialists, I developed the purchasing policy for first-line diagnostics. In addition, we also negotiated with hospitals and other healthcare providers about the sort of care. You also learn about the back side of the process: the evaluation and payment of healthcare claims. My first assignment was to research the claim behaviour of healthcare providers in rehabilitation care. Furthermore, there was a lot of attention to my personal growth via, for example, a coaching trajectory.
Important in my work is being a good communicator, getting diverse parties to agree and having a critical eye. These qualities came up a lot during my Master’s. In addition, the broad base of my Master’s was very useful in helping me to be able to work on different projects and to devise integral solutions. It feels good to contribute to arranging healthcare, paying for healthcare and striving for health and vitality.