It is a report eagerly awaited by hospital players, but that the Ministry of Health has so far refrained from making public. Dated July, this document from the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS) on resuscitation services, on the front line for two years on the front lines of the Covid-19 epidemic, and that The world procured, will not fail to have a particular impact, while the hospital is under fire from the fifth wave. The number of Covid-19 patients in critical care services, which welcome the most serious patients, “Should exceed 3,000 very quickly and reach 4,000 around the holidays”, warned Gabriel Attal, government spokesman, on December 15.
Throughout the 184 pages of the report, entitled “The offer of critical care, response to current need and exceptional health situations”, the social affairs inspectors have expressed their views on a very sensitive issue since the start of the health crisis: France does it have enough resuscitation beds? It is indeed the pressure on these beds that largely leads to the most restrictive measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis.
In February, the IGAS was thus approached by the Ministry of Health to examine the offer of critical adult care in the country, and to deliver its conclusions in the summer, called to be used for “To inform national decisions”.
“Creation of 1,000 intensive care beds by 2030”
In this very detailed inventory of the situation, accompanied by twenty-seven recommendations, the members of the General Inspectorate cautiously respond, in two stages, to the question of capacities. “The assessment carried out by the mission concludes that the foreseeable increase in resuscitation needs, linked mainly to demographic aging, does not call for a massive increase in the number of beds installed”, they indicate. If a massive increase is not considered opportune, a few paragraphs later, in the summary of the report, they nevertheless write that this expected increase in needs, “On the basis of a maximalist estimate”, “could make it necessary to create 1,000 additional intensive care beds by 2030”.
A capacity increase mentioned with reserve therefore, but which should be welcomed in the ranks of resuscitators, who have been denouncing for months structurally insufficient capacities.
To meet this objective of “1,000 beds” in the coming decade, IGAS highlights, ” in the first place “, the need to develop “Downstream structures adapted to the care of patients who are now experiencing extended stays in intensive care”, in particular by creating ” post-resuscitation rehabilitation services “. This will allow, by saving days in intensive care, to reach half of it. For the other 500 beds required, you will need “Favor the opening of beds currently installed, but closed for lack of paramedical personnel”. Or reopenings, more than creations.
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