Cooperation

UZ Brussel has worked closely with several other hospitals and other care institutions and facilities for many years. Structural cooperation is also in place with local GP networks. For as a university hospital, UZ Brussel fulfils a key role as a centre of reference and excellence, in particular as concerns the more specialised and complex acute pathologies, tests or treatments.

A framework agreement was signed in 2007 with University Hospital Ghent, which aims to foster sustained cooperation in the fields of patient care, training and scientific research as well as on administrative and logistics management. Similar collaboration has been in place for longer in clinical areas such as Child Cardiology, Child Endocrinology and Child Oncology, as well as in Diabetology.
In recent years several preferential cooperation agreements have been entered into with the autonomous care institution, ASZ Aalst,for example covering Radiotherapy, Cardiology, Neurosurgery, Perinatology and Intensive Care Paediatrics. Cooperative ties are in place with the Jan Portaels Vilvoorde Hospital, among others concerning Dialysis, Radiotherapy, Medical Oncology, NMR and IZ Paediatrics. Functional links covering diverse fields of medicine have also been established with countless other hospitals (St. Mariaziekenhuis Halle, St. Jozef Bornem, Clinique St. Anne – St. Remi Brussel, Chirec Brussel, Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg, OLV Aalst, H. Serruysziekenhuis Oostende, Ziekenhuis Inkendael Vlezenbeek …)

Care facilities network
Also on the agenda is the progressive development of a network of care facilities, within which UZ Brussel occupies centre stage as a university centre of excellence for specialised research and treatments. Within this network, a fully comprehensive care offering is made available, ranging from the acute care of pathologies to chronic aftercare, from extramural over transmural to intramural care, from primary basic care over secondary to tertiary highly-specialised care. Within this network, a full range of care options has been foreseen, within which all patients can be treated, regardless of their age (children, adults, the (very) elderly) or their condition. The key premise is that one single institution cannot offer all treatments, but instead through cooperation, association and networking, a complete offering can be pooled together which covers every care challenge as effectively as possible.

UZ Brussel will launch further initiatives and endeavour to progressively build up and consolidate this network in the next few years, clearly at every step in close dialogue with the other participating institutions and care providers.