Student doctor in Leiden: no phone queue, no bill per message

There are two ways to see a GP in the Netherlands. You are registered: your insurer pays the practice a fixed amount per quarter, and consultations, messages and repeat prescriptions cost you nothing extra. Or you come as a passing-by patient: every practice then charges the NZa passing-by tariff per consultation, in 2026 € 33.80 for a consultation of 5 to 20 minutes and € 67.60 for a longer one, plus € 3.44 if you are not covered by the Dutch Health Insurance Act.

Some student services only work with that second model. Handy if you are not registered anywhere, but every short message then becomes an invoice you or your insurer has to handle. At HeyDoc you can simply be registered. It costs nothing, you build a file with a doctor who knows you, and you have a fixed GP for referrals, repeat prescriptions and the out-of-hours service.

Waiting on hold at 8 in the morning, telling your story to the assistant first and then again in the consulting room, and missing a lecture for it: that is still how it goes at many practices. Yet student questions are often straightforward, and a photo is sometimes enough.

Here you send a message, with a photo or a request, and the doctor reads it personally. If a consultation is needed, we set it up straight away. You tell your story once. There is ample capacity to answer the same working day; if something slips through once, that is a human error, not a system that keeps you waiting.

You do not need to work out the Dutch healthcare system first. This is how it works with us:

A BSN sometimes takes weeks. Meanwhile you need repeat medication you did not bring from home, or you have a bladder infection just before a trip and would rather not carry it around for a week, even though it is not an emergency. You do not have to wait: you come as a passing-by patient, we help you the same day, and as soon as your BSN and insurance are sorted we convert you to a regular registration. Your file stays.

We see this often with students who have just arrived: arranging repeat medication, a small wound that needs stitches, allergy symptoms that only start after the move, and the stress that comes with moving to a new country. All of it is ordinary GP care.

Life is heavy these days and you are allowed to say so. You send a message or book a conversation, first with the doctor. If more is needed, we look together at the mental health nurse (POH-GGZ) in the practice or a psychologist from our network. You do not have to prove anything and it is covered by your insurance.

Measured with OpenStreetMap routes from Lammenschansweg 15B:

We work with the Zuiderapotheek around the corner, but a prescription can go to any pharmacy in the Netherlands: eFarma (home delivery), Centraal Apotheek Leiden, Apotheek Luifelbaan, Apotheek Hulp der Menschheid, or the pharmacy near your room. You name it, we send the prescription.

Amir Mirrezai, GP (BIG 19917603001). Trained at VUmc in Amsterdam, registered as a GP in both the Netherlands (BIG) and Sweden (Socialstyrelsen), and formerly a trainer in the GP residency programme at LUMC. You get the same doctor at every contact; there is no rotating pool.