According to the government spokesperson, the 21,000 hospital beds that were cut between 2016 and 2021 will reopen in time, as soon as there are more medical staff.
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While the pediatric emergency services are overwhelmed by the bronchiolitis epidemic, the Minister of Health François Braun announced aid of 400 million euros for the hospital. According to a report from the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Dress), there were 21,000 hospital bed closures between 2016 and 2021. But according to government spokesman Olivier Véran, these beds will eventually reopen. “When you no longer have enough doctors or nurses to run entire services, you are led to generally temporary closures, the time to recruithe says. That’s what you get in that number.”
This statement is actually quite false. The DREES report speaks well of “staff constraints not allowing the beds to be maintained” . But that’s not all. This document, published last September, also refers to what is called the “ambulatory turn”. It is a major reorganization of the hospital in which day hospitalizations are favored. The patient goes to the hospital during the day, he receives his care and then he goes home in the evening. He therefore does not need to stay sleeping on the spot and he does not occupy a bed. As part of this ambulatory shift, the beds are therefore closed for good and not just temporarily, as Olivier Véran says.
And this is an underlying trend according to the DREES report. Over the same period 2016-2021, there were 9 000 creations of day hospitalization places, particularly in surgery, including nearly 3 000 for the year 2021 alone. In fact, medicine has progressed in France. The Drees mentions in particular innovations in anesthesia which allow patients to return directly to their homes after an operation. Moreover, according to Christèle Gras-Le Guen, president of the French pediatric society and head of pediatric emergencies in Nantes, the objective of the outpatient shift at the start was to improve the quality of patient care. But for her, we pushed the logic too far…
And that’s what we’re seeing with the current outbreak of bronchiolitis. According to Christèle Gras-Le Guen, there is care that must necessarily be carried out in complete hospitalization, with medical monitoring day and night. This is the case for young patients with bronchiolitis. And according to the head of pediatric emergencies in Nantes, what is currently lacking in services like his is precisely beds.