Dear Chairman of the MSB CMC,

You can regard this as a cry for help on behalf of several colleagues of the medical staff.

There were many risks involved in moving to the CMC (Curaçao Medical Center), many of which were warned well in advance. There are, as might be expected, many problems to be solved. Several do not pose a direct threat to daily patient care. However, the problems still unresolved around the laboratory and related transfusion chain are so serious that solving them deserves the highest priority.

The planned acute action 'only urgent and immediately necessary' (or 'not expanding to elective' as mentioned in the wrap ups) is an intervention that indeed deserves immediate implementation. However, since so far, the CMC is already running at a low 'level', little will change. Moreover, for a department such as hematology-oncology, most care is 'directly necessary', but also, like most considering departments, highly dependent on a fast-functioning and safe lab / transfusion chain. As acute care in particular is highly dependent on the lab / transfusion chain, the viewpoint 'only acute and immediately necessary' will not make care safer, only perhaps 'take the pressure off the boiler'. This means that the situation is now many times more serious than the one we came from.

In the service line app, there are still reports that 'it is not going well' (see surgeon Berry on 11/23 14:43). On Saturday it was still the case that the lab recordings from Friday only became known on Saturday. This situation cannot go any further. Without this awareness being felt through all layers, we fear that the immediately necessary steps that we believe should be taken will not sufficiently follow.

We therefore believe that you are not only required to notify the Executive Board and Inspectorate immediately, but that you are obliged to communicate to the community, as has been done in recent months in Sehos (St. Elisabeth Hospital). If that does not happen, several staff members will go public with this situation.

Hope to have informed you sufficiently,

W. Develter

R. Griffith,

M. van der Graaf,

E. Rooijakkers,

J. Schnog,

D. van der Wetering. "