The addiction “is not a business like the others“, declares to the JDD the president of the Hospital Federation of France (FHP) Frédéric Valletoux, who wishes a framework “serious» the activities of private groups in the nursing home sector.
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“I am not for ‘killing’ the private sector but we must seriously supervise its activities. And ask ourselves about the legal status of companies financed by public money and which carry out missions of general interest“, develops the president of the FHP in an interview with the Sunday newspaper.
“Raising money on the stock market is not an offence. But addiction is not a business like the others“, he adds, a few days after the publication of an explosive book which denounces the practices of the private group Orpea within the retirement homes which it manages. The publication this week of this investigative book,The Gravediggers», by the independent journalist Victor Castanet, caused a shock wave in France, arousing multiple indignant reactions, and the fall on the Stock Exchange of the title Orpea.
Frédéric Valletoux advocates the imposition of “rules common to both sectors», public and private for-profit. Private companies benefit from exemptions from social charges, “but not ushe says. “What about private? I do not know. Today, a public nursing home has 1,000 euros more to pay per resident and per month than a private nursing home. Conversely, we are more controlled“, he adds. It is not “not favorableto the nationalization of private players in the sector, an operation that would cost “15 billion euros“, according to him. “But from the moment these groups receive public funding, they must be subject to traditional rules of transparency and quality.“.
The French Hospital Federation brings together public health establishments (hospitals) and medico-social structures (retirement homes), i.e. almost all establishments in the public sector. Orpea executives dispute the facts related in Victor Castanet’s book, calling them accusations “false, offensive and harmful“. Director General Jean-Christophe Romersi is summoned on Tuesday morning to the Minister Delegate for the Autonomy of the Elderly, Brigitte Bourguignon, to “to respond” to “serious chargesabout the practices of the group.
In “The Gravediggers“, the author describes a system where the care of hygiene, the medical care, even the meals of the residents are “rationedto improve Orpea’s profitability. And this while stays are charged at full price.