Should more hospitals in the Netherlands provide PCI without on-site cardiac surgery?

One of the main conclusions of the recent recommendations of the Health Council of the Netherlands is that the serious problems with waiting lists and inadequate access to timely cardiac surgical interventions have disappeared. Therefore, policy makers as well as the medical profession have concluded that the number of hospitals providing cardiac surgery in the Netherlands should remain stable. In view of the fact that the number of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures has increased to around 30,000 a year and in the coming years will further increase to around 40,000 PCI procedures per year, a variety of practical solutions and a wide variety of opinions have been put forward.