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Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)
Medical validation:
December 23, 2022
In a column published in Le Monde, more than 5,000 doctors, caregivers and hospital workers denounce the collapse of the public hospital. In order to remedy this, they propose to the government four proposals “to save the public hospital”.
Closing of beds, resignation of staff, inequality in access to care, overcrowding of emergencies… In France, the hospital – and the health system in general – is doing badly. A collective of more than 5,000 doctors, caregivers and hospital workers has therefore decided to send a warning message to the President of the Republic, in a column published in The world.
“The public hospital is no longer able to cushion the slightest health crisis”
“Mr President, the public hospital is in the process of cracking and soon collapsing. Today it is no more and no less than preventing the Public Hospital from becoming a 19th century hospice again. The alerts were numerous and in particular the resignation from their administrative functions of more than 1000 department heads in January 2020. Since then, there has been COVID and the hospital has organized itself and coped. But the Ségur in July 2021 raised high hopes, but did not settle anything.”
So begins this letter, co-signed by Dr Gérald Kierzek, medical director of Doctissimo.
“The public hospital is no longer capable of absorbing the slightest health crisis, even if it is foreseeable”. Co-signed. Flu, covid, heat wave + chronic patients out of follow-up etc…ALL the links in the chain care is broken. https://t.co/NiUJjoy0ok @lemondefr
— Dr Gérald KIERZEK⚡?⚕️ (@gkierzek) December 22, 2022
The objective of the forum? Draw the government’s attention to the lack of resources from which the hospital system suffers.
“The public hospital is no longer able to cushion the slightest health crisis, even if it is predictable like heat in summer and bronchiolitis in winter.”
The consequence of this “just-in-time system” is here “loss of chance for patients” and “inequality in access to care“, points out Dr. Kierzek.
“It is a real political subject in the constitutional sense.“
The 4 flagship proposals of the collective
For the signatories of the tribune, the priority is “to act on working conditions” medical personnel. Reason why “four concrete proposals” are submitted in this letter to the government:
- Securing caregivers in a defined service with a defined schedule and a maximum ratio of patients per nurse. To apply these ratios, the signatories specify that it is necessary “to hire approximately 100,000 nurses“;
- The continuation of the financial revaluation initiated by Ségur. “We must continue the wage catch-up initiated by Ségur with two priorities: to promote night and weekend work, and to take into account the high cost of housing for caregivers working in the centers of large cities.“;
- A real change in governance. “Each service must be free to propose its organization, its working hours and must be able to organize the recruitment of its staff with the ratios indicated above“;
- A change in the mode of financing. The signatories propose here to abandon activity-based pricing “which requires a lot of personnel resources“and carry on”the financing guarantee initiated during the Covid crisis“.