The hospital crisis continues to worsen in France. Nearly 21,000 hospital beds have been cut across the country since 2016, and just 4,300 last year. The fault of the Covid and the lack of personnel according to the Ministry of Health, which published its figures on Wednesday.
To rebalance the balance, the hospital is relying more and more on ambulatory care, that is to say the return home after the operation. In front of the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, Paulette quietly waits for her taxi on a bench. Since then, she has been going back and forth every day between the establishment and her home to seek treatment. A practice that convinced her.
“It feels good”
“When you have no worries, it’s perfect”, explains Paulette at the microphone of Europe 1. “I had gallbladder surgery so there was no problem for me to go home. me. And honestly, it feels good,” she continues. Outpatient care, also known as day hospitalization, has increased by 11% in five years in France, in order to compensate for the lack of space. But there is no question for doctor Francois Venutolo, at the origin of the outpatient shift at the Gonesse hospital, in Val-d’Oise, to let the patient go at all costs.
A system already out of breath?
“We do not let a patient go if we are not sure of the security we can bring him,” he explains. And to add: “If, for example, a woman has a gallbladder operation and that in the evening when she comes home, she still has to take care of the five children and her husband, well, it is better to keep it.” However, Eliane Shnaoui, head of the day medicine center in Gonesse, feels that the system is already running out of steam. “We can see that there, the pressure is on us to get our patients out,” she says.
A pressure that poses a problem because it ensures it, difficult for health teams to treat more people in outpatient care than at present.