Four of the Netherlands smaller hospitals, have been told to close down their intensive care departments with immediate effect because they do not meet essential standards, the NRC reports on Friday.

And a further large number of hospitals have been given two months in which to improve the quality of their intensive care (IC) units, the paper says, quoting a new report by government health inspectors.
The report says that the condition of intensive care in the 47 small hospitals it inspected is ‘alarming’. None of them met all the ‘essential conditions for responsible care’. Specialists were not always available and half of the intensive care teams were incomplete at night and during weekends.
But the Dutch hospitals association has criticised the report, and says there is no evidence that small IC units perform worse than big ones.
Inspectors decided to investigate the quality of intensive care units after experts estimated that 250 people died unnecessarily every year because of poor treatment.