President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday, May 31, a month-long “emergency mission” to diagnose the crisis in hospital emergency services and propose ways to respond to it, the first step in a plan to be declined on the scale of the French “1,200 living areas”.
Professor François Braun, president of SAMU-Urgences de France, will have to submit his conclusions “no later than July 1” to the Minister of Health, Brigitte Bourguignon, said the Head of State after a visit to the hospital center of Cherbourg. Its report “will aim to explain, territory by territory, where the shortcomings are, to be able to quantify them”, in particular, the questions of lack of personnel.
On this basis, explained the president, decisions will be taken “to enable more doctors to be mobilized, to regain attractiveness in certain sectors (…). This from the end of the summer will be declined in each territory. »
“Do everything so that [the emergencies] hold” this summer
The President, recalling the changes made during his first term – end of the numerus clausus, Ségur de la santé, etc. – said he found, despite everything, that hospitals are overcrowded, medical deserts are growing, that staff are reporting a “loss of meaning” and many are leaving the health professions. According to him, the health system must be the subject of a “true collective revolution”. This is the subject of the vast project that the ministry and all the players in the health system must start in the summer.
X-ray of the difficulties “territory by territory”, “hospital by hospital”, this project must, according to Emmanuel Macron, make it possible to “build very concrete solutions” adapted to each of the 1,200 intermunicipalities “on the basis of national specifications”, but also with the promise of additional means that the Head of State envisages in “billions of euros”.
Night closures, “load shedding” on other hospitals, access filtered by the SAMU: at least 120 emergency services have been forced to limit their activity or are preparing for it, and all the lights are red. In total, almost 20% of the approximately 620 public and private establishments hosting one or more emergency services are affected. While professionals warn of an embolism of the emergency services this summer, the head of state said “guarantee that we will do everything to keep them going”.
