ORANJESTAD - In February of this year, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Netherlands gave the green light on behalf of the BES island to establish a cooperative between their hospitals. This is to be able to continue to guarantee residents good care and to keep rising healthcare costs under control. In the meantime, Aruba appears to be very reluctant about this cooperation compared to the other countries.
Quartermaster Freek Korver confirms the information that the Aruban Horacio Oduber Hospital (HOH) is not yet participating because they also want permission and agreement from the Aruban health minister. This while other hospitals take their own responsibility and in February the ministers already approved the cooperation between the hospitals.
The HOH does not fall directly under the government, but is a foundation. Nevertheless, hospital director Jacco Vroegop believes that the government also has a say in these kinds of decisions. He denies reports that Aruba has slowed down cooperation between the hospitals of the islands. But informs that the HOH first wants more certainty that it retains sufficient control over its own hospital.
Less influence on collaboration
Korver says that the door remains open for Aruba, but that the other hospitals already want to move on. The statutes of the cooperative are by now ready, and the cooperative should be officially established this month. That is much later than was announced in February. At the time, they still assumed that the official go-ahead for the hospital collaboration could be given in the first quarter.
If Aruba becomes a member later, this may mean that the Aruban hospital can only benefit from the benefits of the collaboration later and has less influence on the cooperation, says Korver.
An important reason for the collaboration is because the hospitals of the islands are financially distressed, or they are too small to be able to provide specialized care. The latter is an expensive item for hospitals on islands because patients must be sent outside the region, especially to Colombia. Another important reason for the collaboration is to help each other in crisis situations such as the corona pandemic and hurricanes.
Hospital situation is becoming critical
The hospitals of Aruba and Curaçao have been in the red for some time, and it is so bad for Aruba that the situation will become critical in the third or fourth quarter of this year, says the director Vroegop. The Aruban hospital is under further pressure because the Netherlands has instructed Aruba to save 60 million guilders on healthcare costs. As a result, the HOH had to cut the salaries of hospital staff already in corona time.
The cutbacks are a condition for getting the corona millions (liquidity support) from the Netherlands that Aruba still desperately needs. The Dutch Undersecretary Raymond Knops (Kingdom Relations) says the corona support will be endangered if Aruba does not participate in the hospital cooperative:
“I assume that Aruba will continue to participate in those talks about cooperation and it is ultimately at the end of the tranche that it is judged whether a country has met the conditions. We will of course look at that critically. And if the conditions are not met, that can have consequences for subsequent tranches, yes.”
Recovery does not affect country package
The Dutch director also says that Aruba's economic recovery, which is proceeding faster than expected, will not affect the implementation of the country package. It is a small windfall, he says, but the agreements in the national package and implementation agendas are for the longer term. Aruba has in fact received an enormous debt due to the corona crisis that, according to Knops, must be repaid in the coming years.