PHILIPSBURG:--- The Ministers of Health from the three Dutch Caribbean Islands who met in Curacao last week with their delegation signed off on a collaboration agreement. The collaboration agreement and meetings held in Curacao last week was a follow-up meeting based on the letter of Intent that was signed in Aruba on June 4th, 2017.
The collaboration agreement prioritizes strategic collaboration between the islands Aruba, Curacao, and St. Maarten.
The agreement states that the countries have agreed to collaborate in three top strategic objectives namely:-
• Collaboration with Centers of Excellence
• Quality and Safety (JCI accreditation, protocol, legislation, logistics)
• Procurement (equipment, materials, software, pharmaceuticals etc).
Further, the countries have agreed to establish a workgroup to work on the objectives and focal points per institution. Within two weeks of the signing, the workgroup will be established with Curacao holding the chairmanship.
The Ministers of Curacao and Aruba have decided to amend the public insurance entity cooperation agreement in order to include St. Maarten. That amended agreement was also signed in Curacao on July 21st, thereby allowing SZV, SVB- Curacao, and UO-AZV will cooperate in medical referrals, the agreement will allow the countries to better coordinate the inter-island referrals which will also include the exchange of and deployment of medical specialists between the countries while aligning payments to the hospitals and medical specialists.
The countries have also agreed to align their efforts when purchasing health care services outside of Aruba, St. Maarten, and Curacao. The agreements also include the exchanging of procedures on medical referrals overseas while pursuing joint contracts with healthcare institutions overseas.
The agreement also includes pharmaceutical products whereby they will share information on the policies in participating countries to better manage the cost of the pharmaceutical products. Agreement was also reached on the IT and data benchmarking, this will help in promoting the alignment of Heath Care Information Systems in the participating countries.
