For several days, the rumor ran. According to our information, Martin Hirsch announced it to the management board of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), Friday June 17: he will leave the management of the Ile-de-France hospital juggernaut at the end of June. Arrived in 2013, the 58-year-old State Councilor spent record time at the head of the powerful Parisian institution, which has 39 hospitals.
Martin Hirsch is leaving his post at a time when the hospital is facing an unprecedented crisis, with a shortage of caregivers leading many establishments to close beds for months. Since the end of the epidemic crisis linked to Covid-19, the bleeding of caregivers has increased, forcing hospital services to reduce their capacities – 18% of beds were closed for lack of staff in the fall of 2021, management announced. of the AP-HP in October. Despite recruitment attempts, the situation has not improved since, with this black spot in the Ile-de-France region where the cost of living is particularly high.
To explain his departure, the director cites the three commitments he made at the heart of the Covid-19 crisis on March 15, 2020. At the time, he promised to “save the most patients”of“Being in solidarity with caregivers”and of “to make sure that the ‘after’ hospital is not the ‘before’ hospital”, he said to World. “I am no longer sure that I can meet the conditions for this last commitment”he says, hence this decision to “put his post of director general of the AP-HP at the disposal of the government”. A way, no doubt, to criticize the health policy of the government which intervenes in the middle of the two rounds of the legislative elections.
“Correcting our own faults”
In a message sent to the entire AP-HP community, at the end of the management meeting, Martin Hirsch takes stock of his years at the head of the powerful institution. “We have shown, in the storm of a pandemic, that we know how to work differently, make the most of our qualities, put aside our faults, show unfailing solidarity”, he writes. Hit hard by the first waves of Covid-19, the AP-HP resisted. In March 2020, “sheave” beds are hastily opened, reinforcements come from all over the country… The breaking point has been reached, not exceeded.
“We now need to define a new framework, based on trust and responsibility, which allows us to act in the same way, but in all weathers, says the manager. (…) I am convinced that many of the ills from which we suffer call for changes of the same magnitude as those made in 1958, when the university hospital was redesigned to restore its strength, nobility and attractiveness. » Martin Hirsch recalls that he had shared a few weeks ago ” what [lui] seemed the most fundamental to start afresh”. Obviously, the government did not hear him.
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