Brexit

From not having medicines, medical devices and tissues available to problems with the storage of data, the registration of doctors and the reimbursement of the cost of treatment of British patients: patient safety is being put under pressure by Brexit. It is a difficult challenge for a umc to prepare separately for its consequences. Each umc works with hundreds of suppliers and tens of thousands of CE-certified medical devices. A hard Brexit would have meant that medical devices that have been approved by an agency in the UK are no longer certified. For hospitals it is impossible to trace the country from which the devices are imported, and thus to know where the real threat lies. Collaboration between the business community, the healthcare sector and the national government to deal with the consequences of Brexit is thus extremely important.

Project organisation

To address the different problem areas, the NFU core team of the project organisation has close links with umc professionals in specialist areas like ICT, personnel matters, pharmacy, purchasing and research. There is also intensive collaboration with the Brexit crisis team of the Netherlands Association of Hospitals (NVZ). The core team focuses particularly on the risk areas of the secure delivery of products, certification of medical devices and availability of medicines.