As a result, hospitals can operate less and emergency rooms sometimes close, the AD reports.
Patients are waiting for flow
The newspaper toured various hospitals and collected information about the number of patients waiting to be transferred to another location.
This showed that about a hundred people in the Utrecht region are still in hospital waiting for care elsewhere. In the Zuyderland Medical Center, forty patients no longer need hospital care and the Maastricht UMC speaks of about forty people a day who can already be discharged.
The patients in these hospitals sometimes wait a few days, but sometimes even a few weeks before they can go elsewhere. Many people on the waiting list are elderly people who, after an emergency admission, are too vulnerable to return to their home and live there independently.
Esther Peters, director of integral capacity management at Maastricht UMC, says to the newspaper: “It is especially difficult to place people who are confused. They often have to be placed in a closed department and need a lot of care. Many institutions have no room for these patients.”
Fewer operations
Due to the patients who remain in the beds, operations are postponed due to a lack of space and fewer new patients can be admitted. The emergency department also sometimes has to close because no new patients can be admitted.
Accumulation problems
The problem follows the many current bottlenecks in healthcare. Since the pandemic, there has been an accumulation of problems, as the demand for care is increasing but the supply continues to fall. There is a shortage of staff throughout the healthcare sector and absenteeism remains high.
“In fact, most of the problems have their origin in the care gap that already exists and continues to widen,” says Wim Goudswaard, cutting business manager at the ADRZ in Goes.
