The concentration of operations on congenital heart defects will not be concentrated in Rotterdam and Groningen for the time being. The decision of the Ministry of Health was reversed on Thursday by the court in Utrecht.
The university hospitals of Leiden, Amsterdam and Utrecht had challenged the decision. They were in danger of losing the operations.
According to the court, the ministry has not properly investigated whether it is necessary to reduce the number of hospitals where heart operations can be performed from five to two. It is therefore not clear whether this decision is ‘necessary and balanced and therefore proportionate’.
According to the ministry, it is better to concentrate operations. This involves a few procedures per year, which require a lot of knowledge and experience. If these operations are concentrated, the remaining university hospitals will perform more operations and the level will increase, the explanation is.
Because they are in danger of losing children’s heart operations, the children’s heart centers Leiden/Amsterdam and Utrecht announced in October that they wanted to collaborate more. The two teams must become one team at two locations, in Utrecht and Leiden.
In 2022, Healthcare Minister Ernst Kuipers, like his predecessor Hugo de Jonge, decided to concentrate the children’s heart centers in Rotterdam and Utrecht. This led to great outrage in the North. A quarter of a million people signed a petition against the decision.
A new investigation was launched into the consequences of the decision. One of the conclusions was that closure of the UMCG children’s heart center will lead to disproportionate disadvantages for academic medical care in the Northern and Eastern Netherlands.
A new decision was made at the beginning of 2023 after the hospitals failed to reach a solution among themselves. Kuipers opted for concentration in Groningen and Rotterdam, but that decision has now been thrown off the table.