Hospital: Macron pledges to ‘clear out all emergency services’ by end of 2024

A huge project that Emmanuel Macron opened this Monday evening, in the field of health. “By the end of next year, we will have to unload all our emergency services,” the head of state dropped in his speech, delivered at 8 pm, without specifying how he was going to do this. unblock”.

A large number of patients to be cared for, a lack of staff… Many emergency services are regularly overwhelmed, especially in summer or during winter epidemics.

Asked on the spot, Patrick Pelloux, president of the French Emergency Physicians Association, said the measure was “impossible unless you go against what has been done so far.” “That would mean opening up all the beds closed due to lack of staff, opening beds downstream of emergency services, and creating better working conditions, especially night shifts,” he says. The ambulance doctor sees this as an “announcement effect” in a fairly long-term period, namely in more than a year and a half.

Last summer “the declared disaster did not happen”

At the end of August, Minister of Health François Braun calculated that “the declared catastrophe (in the emergency department) has not occurred thanks to the active investment of professionals in this field, both hospital and liberal.” In the meantime, a hard cap on the wages of temporary doctors came into effect on April 3, forcing some hospital services to partially close and find an alternative to caring for the sick.

“I find it very hard to believe that this will be resolved in a year and a half, given the current problems of emergency care,” says, for his part, Matthias Vargon, head of the emergency department of the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis. The doctor had just left a meeting about difficulties in some services, “associated with the capping of the temporary.” It is difficult to predict what the situation will be like next summer, and in particular whether many temporary workers will accept caps on their rates by then.

In his speech this Monday evening, Emmanuel Macron also recalled his promise that the 600,000 patients living with the ALD device (long-term condition) and who do not have a primary care physician will soon receive one.