The healthcare crisis is officially entering the next phase. Hospitals across the country have to cancel a large part of planned care. This concerns treatments in which delay does not entail any or ‘any’ risk of permanent health damage and in which patients need a bed in a hospital, nursing home or help from community care after treatment. As a result, many appointments at outpatient clinics are not covered.
This concerns, for example, canceling inguinal hernia corrections in all regions, canceling cosmetic procedures and no longer having pacemakers placed if it is not urgent.
In addition, all Limburg hospitals also cancel a lot of serious, planable care: operations that should take place within three to six weeks. This means many of the cancer, heart and brain surgeries in the province are being postponed. For example, people who need urgent surgery after a car accident are helped.
The decision to intervene nationally was taken on Wednesday in the National Network Acute Care (LNAZ). It is the last step before the phase where it is agreed nationally that some people who really need acute care will no longer receive it. For example, if someone is found with a heart attack and it is not clear how long this person has been without oxygen. This person is currently admitted to an intensive care unit, but no longer in the next phase, a spokesperson for the LNAZ explains, because the chances of survival for this person are not great.
If the pressure on intensive care units subsequently increases, non-medical criteria will eventually also play a role in the selection of who can and cannot go to intensive care, such as the expected length of stay. That is what Minister Hugo de Jonge (CDA, VWS) understands by ‘code black’.
When is it code black? The government and care providers do not speak the same language
health damage
The step has been taken because the number of Covid patients in hospitals is rising rapidly. On Tuesday, four hundred Covid patients were admitted to hospitals. With this national decision, it is hoped, patients across the country will soon have more equal opportunities for urgent care. At the moment, the spread of Covid patients is difficult. It should also make it easier to achieve the agreed 1,150 intensive care beds nationwide.
War medicine, a doctor called it, I think that’s an appropriate term
David Boy director Limburg Zuyderland
Canceling cancer patients is very intense, says David Jongen, hospital director of the Limburg Zuyderland. “People have the feeling: I have a time bomb in my body, it has to come out,” says Jongen. “A doctor called it war medicine, I think that’s an appropriate term.”
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