Lhe right to health is a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution. Timely access to health care of sufficient quality and at an affordable cost must be guaranteed for the population. However, the current degradation of the hospital system is such that it undermines this Republican promise of equality and fraternity.
Between January 15, 2023 and January 15, 2024, the Inter-Hospital Collective identified more than two thousand articles from the regional daily press on hospital difficulties, three hundred and fifty-five articles reporting closures of hospital services, particularly emergency ones. , these closures always being linked to staff shortages.
Among the most profound deficiencies, child psychiatry is devastated: when 1.6 million children have a mental disorder characterized and have associated care needs, only of 750,000 to 800,000 of them get themin often degraded conditions.
These figures paint the portrait of a health disaster at work in our country: psychiatry is left abandoned, emergency departments are closing one after the other, almost half of the teams are missing in Grenoble. , in Orléans, in Saint-Etienne, etc.
Treat at a lower cost
Why this disaster? Because, for twenty years, the organization of work in hospitals has been designed to be more “efficient”, in other words to treat at a lower cost. With two thirds of the hospital budget being staff salaries, the strategy has been to intensify work for nursing staff, according to the injunctions of the Interministerial Committee for the Performance and Modernization of Hospital Care Offerings (Copermo) for the opening of any new building or following the “toolboxes” produced by the National Agency for Supporting the Performance of Health and Medical-Social Establishments (ANAP).
Concretely, it means more patients per doctor, per nurse, per caregiver, a reduction in exchange times between caregivers and patients, a productivist vision of care with a hunt for downtime.
These political choices resulted in an increase in turnover and the flight of healthcare personnel, well before the Covid-19 epidemic. Today, 30% of hospital doctor positions are not filledthe nurses and caregivers leave disgusted after five years of practice at the hospital.
The vicious circle is underway: due to the shortage of personnel, work intensifies for the nursing staff remaining on the job, which generates departures, and deteriorates the attractiveness of the healthcare professions for young graduates. At the end, the services close.
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