Lelystad does not want to lose the regional hospital

Wednesday morning on the parking lot in front of the Zuiderzeeziekenhuis. In the hallway, everything is calm, a boy is supporting his friend with a gypsum foot, an old man is eating a roll of sausage in the cafeteria. On Tuesday it was announced that IJselmeer hospitals, including the MC Zuiderzee in Lelystad, had requested a postponement of payment. According to the commission, the bankruptcy of hospitals is "possibly inevitable".

The Slotervaart hospital in Amsterdam is also collapsing. But unlike this institution, no other hospital in Lelystad can take care of the care in the city. If this hospital is closed, Lelystad (77,000 inhabitants) will have no more hospital, no emergency care and no intensive care. The obstetrics department closed on Tuesday.

"A disaster," says Wim Wolschrijn, while he was coming out of the hospital hall of a decided step. The Lelystedeling comes regularly this morning for a simple check. Yes, he saw that the hospital did not have the "new tours". "But the care was right and it does not have to be so sophisticated everywhere?"

Built on Growth

A big hospital, according to Mrs. G. Bleeker (63). "I have a subscription here." They had noticed that there had been problems lately. The empty beds around her were not made. "It's definitely the food of yesterday," she had asked the nurse last night jokingly. He had laughed but, said Bleeker, "tears in his eyes". "There are those who already know this misery for the umpteenth time." Terrible. "

MC Zuiderzee has a long history of problems. The great expectations of 1982, when the first hospital in the province opened in Lelystad, never really came to fruition. With a capacity of 300 beds, it was built on growth. But Lelystad never became the big city that people thought.

A merger in 1990 with the Emmeloord Hospital is a failure. In 2009, a bankruptcy was averted at the last moment thanks to the help of tens of millions of people from the municipality, the province and the government. Minister Ab Klink (Public Health, CDA) at the time was a "hospital system". So important to the region that bankruptcy should be avoided at all costs.

In 2018, a comparable rescue operation does not appear. On Tuesday, the minister responsible, Bruno Bruins (Public Health, VVD), wrote to the lower house that he was investigating the consequences of the eventual disappearance of hospitals for other hospitals in the region. Lelystad's patients should then travel to Almere, for example, or to Harderwijk or Zwolle, all in half an hour to three quarters by car. That their city, a provincial capital, may have even more hospital? Not possible. But many also say: for a very serious operation, you have already gone elsewhere.

Margriet Hoekstra of Urk drops her brother this morning for "an echo". The nurses are "very nice here," says Hoekstra. "But I always say: in the hospitals of Zwolle and Amsterdam, the doctors got a 10." His brother Klaas (54) adds: the floors are stuck, the beds are not always clean. "And if something really does not happen, they'll send you to Zwolle or Sneek." Brother and sister know where everything goes wrong with Zuiderzee: "managers" who earn "far too much money".

In 2009, the hospital group Loek Winter was taken over in collaboration with Slotervaart Hospital. The remediation tours he's been doing in recent years in hospitals, which he wanted to convert into a kind of winning fighters, have not had the desired effect.

An employee of the restaurant industry who does not want to give his name in order not to harm his position, speaks of the rumors that he has heard for a long time in the cafes. "They wanted to do some sort of outpatient clinic like Emmeloord." The hospital, which is also part of the IJsselmeer group, was demolished and only certain specialist care was available.

She works in department 2.0, surgery, as a nutrition assistant. But his name does not want a woman who wants to smoke with colleagues of the newspaper. "It's a blow to all of us," she says. "And nobody knows anything, I just talked to my supervisor, he could only say: watch your mail." She repeats what a colleague just said and what the atmosphere describes "so beautiful". "It's as if someone we all love is dead, and we, family members, must continue." Especially for patients. "