To clarify: the FHML Faculty Council was not eligible to vote on the proposal to merge the hospital and the whole university, only on the integration of their faculty and the MUMC+. A plan the council could not and would not approve in a meeting held behind closed doors on Tuesday afternoon. The worry is that the much larger hospital would overshadow the faculty, said council chair Iwan de Jong in an initial reaction. “We are concerned about the position of our dean in the bigger picture,” he said. They would be made vice chair of the new MUMC Board, while the head of the hospital would be chair. The council did not like that, said De Jong: “They are worried it would take away our influence. The two should be given equal roles.”
Double role
Additionally worries also relate to the double role of the head of the hospital, who would also be a member of the new Executive Board in charge of the whole university and the hospital. The council was clearly not convinced by an earlier answer from Helen Mertens, the current head, who said that there was no other option, because it should be somebody who knows the hospital inside out.
And then there is the role of the Faculty Council. It is “insufficiently explained” in the plans: “Who do we talk to about what, exactly? We were told, ‘That won’t change’, but you want to see that reflected somewhere in the official documents.”
Why was the decision taken behind closed doors, without the press or even dean Annemie Schols present? “I felt that the council should be given the option, which it preferred. I can’t read the minds of all the council members, but I feel our relationship with the board is good and safe.”
Not the end of the road
The council will likely present a letter explaining the decision to the Faculty Board on Thursday. It is not the end of the road: cooperation is absolutely still desirable, said De Jong, just not in this way. After all, many people at FHML also work at the hospital, which brings with it all sorts of practical problems. “We want to help brainstorm solutions to those problems.”
The MUMC+ Works Council also advised against the plans on Monday. The advice, given in a closed meeting, was unanimous, said chair Marc Bemelmans and official secretary Claudia Backes. It was an easy decision. “We have been working on this for a long time, everyone was agreed.”
For example, about the role of the participatory body: the plan is for all the various councils at the university and the hospital to send a representative to ‘negotiations’ with the new Executive Council. An impossible construction, said the Works Council. “They would have to keep going back to their own people to discuss. It would be unworkable,” said Bemelmans. Furthermore, “how much influence would we have?”
"A monstrosity"
Then there is the new governance model, rather loftily labelled ‘the Maastricht model’, unique in the Netherlands: integrating a hospital with an entire university has never been tried in this country. That was also shot down. Bemelmans spoke of “a monstrosity. Nobody knows whether it will work. And you can’t just stop it, it would cost months to unravel again if you want to turn it back. It’s an experiment. A well-reasoned one, yes, but will it work in practice?” The Works Council, which had a legal expert examine the plans, is highly doubtful. “This is an amalgamation of two organisations with an extra layer on top,” said Backes. How that would result in a more decisive, more efficient organisation, is beyond the council.
However, the Works Council is not against closer cooperation. “On the contrary, just not in this way.”
"The next steps"
The decision by the University Council to reject the plans last week came as a surprise to president Pamela Habibović, she told Observant earlier. She was disappointed and puzzled by the decision. She also said she would wait for the reactions of the other representative bodies, before determining “the position and the next steps”, together with the Supervisory Board and the deans.
There is also still the question of the Staff Council, the hospital’s medical staff participatory body. It is expected to publish its advice on 31 March. But concerns were also raised there in an earlier interview with Observant. They were likewise not impressed by how the new governance model and decision-making would work in practice.