Since Aug. 1, 2024, only reimbursement in approved breast clinics

For years, Pink Ribbon has been stressing the importance of accredited breast clinics, where you can get the best and most up-to-date care and treatments when you are affected by breast cancer. However, that message did not get through to all patients, so women and men with breast cancer were also treated in hospitals without accredited breast clinics. In hospitals without accredited breast clinics, you are more at risk that the health care providers there have less experience and are less knowledgeable about the latest treatments for breast cancer, because they see a wide variety of disease states, whereas in breast clinics, breast cancer is the focus. Because referrals were not always made correctly, Federal Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) intervened by stopping funding for hospitals without accreditation for two crucial elements in breast cancer treatment: surgery, on the one hand, and multidisciplinary consultation (in which a team of health care providers consults together on the best treatment for each individual patient), on the other. For other treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation or hormone treatment, you can go to another (sometimes closer) hospital, but they must follow the advice of the accredited breast clinic following your case.

Survival

The new measure, set out in a Royal Decree dated May 25, 2024, comes after a study of 50,000 women with breast cancer in Belgium, in 2023, showed that the survival rates of women who were not treated at an accredited breast clinic were much lower compared to those who did go to an accredited breast clinic. On average, these women are 30% more likely to die within five years. An uproar arose over these figures between various hospitals and breast clinics, as a ranking was made of breast clinics and hospitals where breast cancer is best treated, while quality control in the various clinics is not always correct and also because some centers would attract more patients with more advanced breast cancers due to their location. This needs to be further clarified by optimizing the monitoring of breast clinics and further improving the registration systems they use.