PARIS (Reuters) – End of activity-based pricing in hospitals, recruitment of medical assistants, reorganization of work: Emmanuel Macron on Friday advocated a series of measures intended to respond to the difficulties of a French health system in suffering.
The Head of State presented his wishes to caregivers in the Center Hospitalier Sud Francilien (CHSF) in Corbeil-Essonnes, in the Paris suburbs, where he visited pediatric emergencies.
Aware of the “individual and collective exhaustion” in the hospital, with the feeling of “end crisis day”, he proposed to “free up medical time” and improve a system that has been under extreme strain in recent years. months due, in particular, to three concomitant waves of epidemics of COVID-19, influenza and bronchiolitis.
Main announcement of the Head of State on the financial level: the exit from pricing by activity in the hospital as of the next Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS).
“The fee-for-service has created a lot of dysfunctions,” argued Emmanuel Macron.
To improve daily life, the president has asked that the number of medical assistants be increased from 4,000 to 10,000 by the end of 2023.
In the shorter term, by June 1, he called for a collective reflection on working time, in particular faced with the “hyperrigidity” of the 35-hour week, and a reorganization of services so that everyone takes their part and that care is not sacrificed on the altar of administrative stiffness.
“The service must once again become the organic and human unit in order to be able to organize things”, he said, advocating in addition the establishment of an “administrative and medical tandem” at the head of hospitals.
In the eyes of Emmanuel Macron, the torments of the health system are not just a question of means, knowing that in “three years the health budget had increased by 50 billion euros”, a “necessary catch-up”.
“A SITUATION WHICH RISKS TO DETERIORATE”
Improvement will take time, he warned. “We are in a situation that risks deteriorating,” he said, recalling in particular that “almost half of doctors today are over 60” and that the training of a new generation of caregivers will take years.
For other concrete measures, he asked for the establishment of specific care for chronic patients and launched the “project” of the remuneration of night work in the hospital, while a nurse is not for example paid only one euro more per hour at night than during the day.
“The challenge for the next few months is to succeed in keeping caregivers in place,” Emmanuel Macron told staff tempted to throw in the towel.
For the future, the Head of State said he was betting on “the reasonable triptych” that are “ecology, school and health”.
“If we don’t invest properly in people and everything that surrounds them, we can do whatever we want on other public policies, it will be difficult to move forward,” he said. he says in conclusion.
Liberal doctors demonstrated on Thursday at the call of the Doctors for Tomorrow collective to demand in particular a doubling of the price of the consultation from 25 to 50 euros, or even the invoicing of appointments not honored.
The Order of Physicians and the unions of liberal and hospital doctors declared in a joint press release that they were opposed “to a multi-speed medicine”.
Last October, the Minister of Health and Prevention, François Braun, launched the Health component of the National Council for Refoundation, still in progress, which aims in particular to identify new issues and to “repair” the public hospital and the emergency room.
(Written by Elizabeth Pineau and Kate Entringer, edited by Blandine Hénault)