Overwhelmed emergencies, a crying lack of caregivers in hospitals and in town... 2022 ends in extreme tension for the French health system.

At a time when general practitioners are beginning a strike movement denouncing their working conditions, the triple epidemic of bronchiolitis, Covid-19 and influenza is increasing the pressure on hospitals already undermined by a structural lack of caregivers. 

If the situation has improved on the bronchiolitis and Covid-19 front, it has become tense for the flu.

According to the latest epidemiological bulletin from Public Health France, published on Wednesday, the number of visits to the emergency room for flu-like illness increased by 52% over the week of December 19 to 25 compared to the previous one, while hospitalizations jumped by 75% . 

"It's a bit of a week of all dangers, but the mobilization of personnel is absolutely complete and the system manages to hold up", tried to reassure Wednesday, December 28 François Braun, the Minister of Health, during a visit. at the Annecy Genevois hospital center, in Haute-Savoie.

But on the ground, caregivers keep sounding the alarm.

Everywhere, calls to 15, visits to emergencies and the use of stretchers in the corridors are abnormally high.

>>Also read - Covid-19, flu and bronchiolitis: France facing an unprecedented "triple epidemic"

More than 10 hours of waiting in the emergency room

Nine hospitals and a clinic in Savoie and Ain announced on Thursday that they would activate the "white plan", a decision which leads to "partially deprogramming" certain interventions.

The “epidemic context leads to “strong tension on beds and human resources, increased this week by a lower availability of city medicine”, which translates into “significant waiting times in the emergency room, sometimes more than 10 hours , and difficulties in hospitalizing patients in medicine”, indicate these 10 establishments in a press release.

"We are more than complete, it overflows in the corridors", we also denounce at the Strasbourg University Hospital.

"Young people are still fine, but when you have nonagenarians, it's complicated", underlines Professor Pascal Bilbaut, the head of emergencies, while the stretchers lined up next to each other accumulate even in the service entrance.

“We have reached around 220 visits per day at our two emergency reception sites. This is a figure up 6% compared to 2021”, which was already a record year, he underlines. 

These "failures" of the system have disastrous consequences, underlined the Samu-Urgences union of France, which has identified 26 "unexpected deaths" of people awaiting hospital care since December 1 in France.

A strike "at the worst time"

If it is difficult to measure the impact, the new strike launched among general practitioners between Christmas and New Year's Day has further increased this pressure on the hospital and the liberal emergency physicians of SOS Médecins.

"More than 50%" of the surgeries are closed, according to the group Doctors for tomorrow, which had estimated at nearly 80% the level of its first mobilization, on December 1 and 2.

Its central demand remains the increase in the price of the consultation to 50 euros to create a "shock of attractiveness" towards a city medicine crushed by administrative tasks and which no longer attracts young people.

While acknowledging "the difficulties and sometimes the exhaustion of certain liberal doctors", François Braun "firmly" condemned this movement, while the negotiation of the convention binding these practitioners to Health Insurance is not over.

The former emergency doctor judged "not acceptable that access to French health care is thus undermined" in a critical period.

His successor at the head of Samu-Urgences de France, Marc Noizet, felt that this strike was coming "at the worst of times".

But not all hospital doctors criticized the action.

The inter-union coalition Actions Praticiens Hôpital asked "that the movement of liberal doctors be taken into due consideration: it is only the tip of the iceberg that is the decay of our health system".

"A fundamental answer"

The improvement of working conditions is at the center of expectations.

"There is a financial response", but it is not sufficient, said emergency doctor Mathias Wargon on Friday.

We need "a fundamental response which is to ensure a quality of life at work, an interest in work", he commented on franceinfo, noting that "nurses - more than doctors - have the impression to plug the holes".

A collective of more than 5,000 doctors, caregivers and hospital workers recently demanded a defined schedule and a maximum patient-to-nurse ratio.

This would require hiring "about 100,000 nurses" over three years.

The Hospitals of Paris alone want to recruit 2,700 nurses in 2023, and as many in 2024. It must be said that in four years, the nursing workforce of the AP-HP, of around 17,000 in 2018, has shrunk 10%, with the result that the proportion of closed beds has worsened to 16%.

François Braun reaffirmed that he would announce in January the "main lines" of restructuring the supply of care, in hospitals and in the city, on the basis of the work of the National Council for Refoundation (CNR).

With AFP

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