The hospitals in Assen and Emmen will be expanding to handle all emergency care and complex treatment for the province of Drenthe and the southeastern portion of Groningen, and facilities in Hoogeveen and Stadskanaal will primarily treat patients by appointment.
Translation by Traci White
Dagblad van het Noorden reports that the three Treant hospitals– Refaja in Stadskanaal, Bethesda in Hoogeveen and Scheper in Emmen – and Wilhelmina in Assen will continue to offer general treatment to patients on site.
The idea for the hospitals to specialise in certain kinds of care was an alternative to Treant’s much contested announcement last year that it would only offer operations at a single, central location in Drenthe. The plans mean that residents in Drenthe and the southeastern portion of Groningen will remain within the legally mandated 15 minute ambulance access range, and that they can be transported to a hospital within 45 minutes.
Accident and Emergency Care
Complex and acute care will no longer be carried out in Stadskanaal and Hoogeveen, and will instead be available in Assen and Emmen, as well as the Ommelander hospital in Scheemda which opened last year.
Stadskanaal and Hoogeveen will still have an A&E department which is only open during the day. The two hospitals will keep a number of beds for short term hospital stays and will have specialist centres for elder care and hip and knee operations. According to RTV Drenthe, the Bethesda hospital in Hoogeveen will also have an elder care centre and an orthopaedic centre, and they will also expand their existing breast cancer care facilities.
