Supervision of mental health care in The Netherlands

In the Netherlands the Inspectorate of Mental Health has to supervise the quality of mental health care that is given to its citizens. A shortage of inspectors hampers effective accomplishment of this task, and government budget cuts have increased this problem. Another obstacle is the absence of standardized methods of supervision and clear norms for medical practice. This paper describes the efforts of the Inspectorate to develop a new technique of supervision to solve this problem, the so-called frames of reference.