BIG-register Verification — Dutch Healthcare Practitioners

Verify whether a Dutch healthcare practitioner is registered in the BIG-register, the statutory register maintained by the Ministry of Health under the Wet BIG.

Employers, staffing agencies, and healthcare institutions are legally required to check BIG registration before someone practises a protected profession, and to re-check it periodically. This Actor turns that check into a batch operation.

What it does

Give it BIG numbers or surnames. For each match it returns the practitioner's registration status, profession, specialisms, any practice limitations, and any disciplinary rulings.

Field	Description
registrationNumber	The 11-digit BIG number
mailingName, lastName	Name as published in the register
professionalGroup	Resolved profession, e.g. Arts, Verpleegkundige, Apotheker
isRegistered	The answer — true only when the entry is neither ended nor struck off
strikedOut	Struck from the register
registrationEnded	Registration lapsed
specialisms	Registered specialisms
limitations	Restrictions on the practitioner's practice
judgmentProvisions	Disciplinary rulings recorded against the registration
profileUrl	Link back to the official register entry

Input

Option	Description
bigNumbers	11-digit BIG numbers to verify. Most reliable — one number identifies one practitioner.
names	Surnames to look up
professionalGroup	Restrict surname searches to one of 31 professions
maxResultsPerName	Cap on practitioners verified per surname

On surnames: the register refuses overly broad searches rather than truncating them — a common surname alone returns nothing useful. Always pair a surname with a profession, or search by BIG number. When a search is refused, the Actor logs a warning naming the query instead of failing the run.

Notes on cost and scope

Two lightweight JSON requests per practitioner, no browser and no proxy.

This Actor is built for verification, not bulk extraction. It looks up practitioners you already have a reason to check — a job applicant, a contracted locum, a staff roster. It deliberately does not enumerate the register, and the register's own API does not permit it: broad queries are rejected outright.

Data protection

The BIG-register is a public statutory register and these fields are published by law so that employers and patients can verify practitioners. The records nonetheless describe identified individuals and include disciplinary information, so they are personal data under the GDPR. Use them for the purpose the register exists for — verifying professional registration — and retain only what that purpose requires.

Output example

{
  "registrationNumber": "29928279301",
  "mailingName": "A.A.J.H. Zwanenburg",
  "professionalGroup": "Arts",
  "isRegistered": true,
  "strikedOut": false,
  "registrationEnded": false,
  "specialisms": [],
  "limitations": [],
  "judgmentProvisions": [],
  "profileUrl": "https://zoeken.bigregister.nl/zoeken/bignummer?number=29928279301"
}