Sometimes in bigger cities, for "popular" doctors or pain teams (Leuven/Louvain) there is a 3 month waiting list. If you go elsewhere, you might not have a waiting list at all. It greatly depends here. I went locally, because I did not want to travel to Leuven/Louvain, and I got a great doctor here who put together a pain program that works for me, and he worked with my GP/PCP and so... Yeah. 2004 since I got on this program; 2021 now and it's still the same. No need to steer it in a different direction, and everything is still as effective as on day 1.

It goes usually fast here too.

And yes, pros and cons to every system, but at least you don't lose the roof over your head if you have something incurable or serious. There is that!