Paris (AFP)
Nearly 4,200 hospital beds were abolished in 2018 in France, where the number of maternities fell below the 500 threshold, while emergencies recorded 400,000 additional passages, according to a report published Friday by Drees, the statistical service social ministries.
Bed closures continued in public and private health facilities, which had already crossed the symbolic bar of 400,000 full hospital beds and 2017 downward.
With 4,195 additional cuts in 2018, the 3,042 hospitals and clinics had exactly 395,670 beds at the end of the year, according to the annual "panorama" of the Drees.
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 again 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.
© 2020 AFP