The Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) needs more time for its report on the future of pediatric heart surgery in our country. The NZa informed the Minister of Health, Ernst Kuipers, of this. The UMCG will therefore have to have some patience before it knows where it stands.
There are currently four university medical centers in the Netherlands, where children (and adults) with a congenital heart defect are operated on. In addition to the UMCG, these are the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Leiden University Medical Center and the UMC Utrecht. Everyone involved agrees that that is too much.
These are highly specialized procedures that can only be performed by a dozen pediatric heart surgeons. Moreover, these types of operations are relatively rare. In order to get a good grasp of this specialism, and to keep it under control, it is important that the surgeons make sufficient ‘flight hours’. But with about 1,400 procedures, spread over four heart centers, this is hardly feasible.
When it became clear in December 2021 that Kuipers intended to discontinue the pediatric heart surgery in Groningen and Leiden, this led to a storm of protests from all over the northeast of the Netherlands.
Based on the report, the House of Representatives will decide how many pediatric heart surgery centers may remain and where they will be located. The UMCG says it understands the postponement.