Hasselt (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The hospital AZ Vesalius in Tongeren now operates as a group alongside Jessa Hospital in Hasselt. Joint service and department oversight and care program administration now occur between hospitals, yet they maintain their distinct recognition numbers.
The medical institutions AZ Vesalius in Tongeren and Jessa Hospital in Hasselt announce their structured partnership framework for shared service management under separate recognition numbers. The integrated structure enables the hospitals to focus on handling workforce shortages and workload management issues through common operational control by a shared committee.
The newly formed structure results from extended discussions about closer partnership development and provides optimised resource management together with expanded professional growth opportunities. Upcoming medical guidelines will explain specific operational procedures to maintain primary services across the sites, together with guidance about centralising specialised medical care.
“With this new structure, we can better organize a number of medical and support services,”
explains Steve Hoste, Chairman of the Board of Directors of AZ Vesalius.
“That helps us to better deal with the scarcity on the labor market and gives us more room to keep the workload manageable. In addition, we can offer our employees and doctors more and better career opportunities.”
“Specifically, we have looked at which activities can continue in both hospitals,”
explains Karin Genoe, chair of the Board of Directors of the Jessa Hospital.
“It is a logical evolution that certain specialised interventions are bundled in one hospital, supplemented with antenna points in the other.”
What is the history of Jessa Hospital’s regional healthcare partnerships?
Jessa Hospital emerged in 2010 from the unification of Virga Jesse Hospital with Salvator-Saint-Ursula Hospital at Hasselt, which now functions as Limburg’s second-largest healthcare institution with 981 licensed beds.
Jessa Hospital maintains three care centres at Virga Jesse, Salvator, and Sint-Ursula, alongside a logistics facility and provides employment for about 3,000 individuals, which designates it as Hasselt’s biggest employer.
The hospital started in 1626 when three nuns established a care facility in Hasselt before developing into the 600-bed Virga Jesse Hospital in 1965. The creation of the Salvator campus happened in 1924, and eventually combined operations with Sint-Ursula in 1996 until becoming the contemporary Jessa Hospital.
The oncology department at this hospital has maintained a continuous presence for more than four decades through its distribution of 46 medical oncology beds and 7 palliative care beds alongside its 10 specialised radiotherapy practitioners who have established regional cancer rehabilitation programs.
The hospital plans to construct two twenty-story towers worth €550 million on their Salvator campus that should be finished by 2030. The available research does not reveal details about Jessa’s integration with the Andreaz network, specifically regarding the 2023 collaboration with AZ Vesalius.
The healthcare institution demonstrates its commitment to specialized service centralization through its historical mergers and multi-campus structure, which support local care accessibility according to the stated partnership objectives.
