No more pediatric heart surgery in Utrecht

Kuipers declared that complex pediatric heart surgeries will only be performed at the Erasmus MC hospital, in Rotterdam, and at UMC Groningen. The announcement marks the end of a long-standing debate.

By restricting specialised heart surgeries in children to two hospitals, the quality of the service is set to increase. UMC Utrecht and UMC Leiden wanted to be one of the two locations too.  

Initially, UMC Utrecht seemed to have the best pitch, alongside Rotterdam, but the northern provinces offered a lot of political resistance to that scenario. The four institutions were requested to come to an agreement last week, but that didn't work out, leading the minister to take matters into his own hands.

In a statement, UMC Utrecht calls his decision "incomprehensible" (link in Dutch, Ed.), given that the synergy with the Princess Máxima Centre for Pediatric Oncology, in the Utrecht Science Park, is going to disappear.

"The unique bridge — and we mean that literally and figuratively — between the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital and the Princess Máxima Centre can not be taken over by other centres. This means that kids who are severely sick with cancer, who need the expertise of a heart surgeon or pediatric anaesthetist, will have to travel unnecessarily, thus exposing themselves to safety risks."