In December 2021, then Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge announced that cardiac surgery and cardiac catheterization in children and highly complex interventions in adults with a congenital heart defect will be concentrated in two centers in the future: Erasmus MC and UMC Utrecht. That would mean that the children’s heart center in Groningen would disappear.
There was a petition that was eventually signed more than 260,000 times. De Jonge left the final decision to the new minister, Ernst Kuipers. He immediately indicated that he would uphold the decision of his predecessor.
In the meantime, the UMCG, the Provincial Council and various municipalities have campaigned for the preservation of the centre. National Healthcare Authority (NZa) was preparing a report on the possibility of closing the center. That report came in December 2022 and the report was critical of the closure: ‘Acute care at risk in the Northern Netherlands’. Still, the minister persisted.
He sticks to the closure of two centers, but leaves it up to the centers themselves whether the UMCG is at those two centers. The final decision will be made in April of 2023.