The "single emergency call number" whose deputies have just voted for the experiment rhymes with "loss of luck" for the patient and "disorganization of the entire hospital chain", warns François Braun, president of the Samu-Urgences union from France for whom the 15th "is a small nugget that should not be lost".

“The first to get a health call must be a health professional,” explains François Braun.

Putting "an intermediary between the Samu and the patients" will entail "waste of time" and "disruption of the message" because "it is often the first words that are important", he adds.

The deputies voted in committee on May 12th to experiment with a "single emergency call number" instead of 17 (for the police), 18 (for firefighters) and 15 (for Samu).

A real sea serpent in the organization of public emergency services, the single number has re-emerged thanks to a bill on Civil Security and firefighters, carried by the deputy (LREM) Fabien Matras.

"If it is not a professional who picks up, he will overreact"

But this return is not unanimous: in a column published this Sunday in

Le Journal du dimanche

, nearly 200 signatories alerted "to the fact that devoting 112 as a single emergency call number for all services would amount to choose a response to emergency calls that is both less effective or even dangerous and more costly for the taxpayer ”, recalling that“ only a doctor is able to define with the appellant the seriousness of the medical situation ”.

In addition to François Braun, Frédéric Valletoux, president of the Fédération hospitalière de France (FHF), Bruno Riou, crisis medical director of Public Assistance - Hospitals of Paris, and Rémi Salomon, president of the medical commission of the Hospitals of Paris, have in particular signed this forum. "Degrading the principle of regulation is to destabilize the entire organization of care", assures François Braun. "If it is not a professional who picks up, he will overreact". "Without this regulation, a call equals a dispatch of an ambulance, a transport to the hospital".

“In March of last year, the SAMU in France received in the space of forty-eight hours 80,000 more calls per day.

But we didn't send those 80,000 people to the hospital!

".

“We gave advice, we did follow-up… We did what we know how to do: medical regulation.

"" On the one hand, there is the issue of relief and security, which is a problem for the Ministry of the Interior.

And on the other hand, a health issue that must go to health, that cannot be discussed, ”concludes the medical director of Samu 57 (Moselle).

Miscellaneous

Too eager to see the world, a baby is born on the ring road of Rennes

Society

Complaints multiply against Samu, who defends his line

  • Health

  • Society

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  • Samu

  • Emergency room