A new figure to understand the reality of the hospital. More than 4,100 hospital beds were abolished in 2018 in France, according to a report by Drees, the statistical service of social ministries, published this Friday. Over the same period, the number of emergency visits exploded.
Bed closures continued in public and private healthcare facilities, which had already crossed the symbolic bar of 400,000 full hospital beds in 2017 downward. With 4,195 more removals in 2018, 3,042 hospitals and clinics had exactly 395,670 beds at the end of the year, according to the annual "panorama" of the Drees.
500 beds canceled in maternity hospitals
This loss of accommodation capacity was partially offset by the creation of 1,845 partial hospitalization places (without overnight stays), bringing their number to almost 77,300. A rebalancing which illustrates the “ambulatory shift” in hospital care, with a further increase in partial hospitalizations (16.1 million days, or + 2%) and a new decline in full hospitalizations (118.2 million days, or - 1%).
Also in 2018, eleven maternity units closed, the country now has less than half a thousand (492) places of birth. In a context of declining birth rates for several years, some 500 obstetric beds have been abolished (15,400 in total).
Conversely, attendance at 709 emergency services still broke records, with more than 21.8 million passages, up 2% year on year. A saturation which led a few months later to an unprecedented strike by caregivers, which quickly spread to the whole of the public hospital, without successive government plans succeeding in stopping this social movement.
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