Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health) maintains that only two of the four centers for specialist pediatric heart surgery can remain open in the future. On April 1, he will decide which two centers they will be. He will ask academic hospitals for advice.
Surgical procedures on children with a congenital heart defect are now being performed in four centers of academic hospitals. This is happening in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Groningen. The fourth center is a collaboration between Amsterdam and Leiden.
First, Minister Kuipers planned to keep the children’s heart centers in Rotterdam and Utrecht open. But later he decided to await an investigation by the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) into the consequences for hospital care.
The NZa warned that the closure could have consequences for intensive care for children and acute care in certain regions. In addition, this could also lead to a much longer travel time for parents and their children who need acute care.
That is why the authority proposed to divide the care into a northern and southern region. But patient organizations don’t like that.
Marking the place ‘because of the urgency of this subject’ is not desirable
The discussion about the centers has been going on since 1993, Kuipers writes in a letter to the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers (NFU). That is why Kuipers believes that a decision must be made quickly.
The minister wants to know within a month whether the NFU can make the decision itself. By 1 April at the latest, Kuipers wants to know which two of the four hospitals can continue to provide care. It is not desirable, according to the minister, to think any longer about whether to pass the time as proposed by the NZa because of “the urgency of this subject”.
Kuipers hopes that the NFU will also investigate how the negative consequences can be limited. He wants to have clarity about this by October 1 at the latest. He expects that discussions between UMCs will be difficult as long as it is not clear in which hospitals the treatments should be concentrated.
The minister is in favor of concentration of certain specialist care. More patients with a specific disorder will then be treated in those areas, which will improve the care. According to the minister, this view is “widely shared”.
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