at the Tours CHRU, services have still not returned to the same level of activity as before Covid-19

Four years after the Covid-19 epidemic, French hospitals have returned to their level of activity before the health crisis, but with worrying disparities. Example in Tours, in the neurology department of the CHRU.

Four years ago, the first confinement began in France. According to a study by the French Hospital Federation that franceinfo revealed to you on Monday March 18, hospitals returned to their “overall” pre-Covid level of activity in 2019. But this is not the case for certain sectors, such as cardiology, transplantation, or the management of diseases of the nervous system.

In Tours, as in all hospitals in France in March 2020, we then focused on Covid-19. Almost everything else stops, remembers Doctor Julien Biberon, head of the neurology department at the CHRU: “For Charcot disease, therefore amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, usually at least ten patients per month were seen. There was a gap, absolutely”he admits before specifying that, subsequently, “this has been caught”says the doctor.

“We lack human resources”

Except for consultations, however, the activity of the service has still not returned to the same level as before Covid-19. Is this linked to refusal of care or deaths of patients? Doctor Julien Biberon and his colleague Doctor Mariam Annan wonder: “Which patients did not come to us at all because they died of their stroke? It’s difficult to know”says Mariam Annan. “I have in mind a few patients who were afraid to leave their homes after Covid, but these are a few patients. Our problem currently is medical demographics”says Julien Biberon.

Because if Covid-19 is behind us, what worries these doctors today concerns the shortage of caregivers which does not allow for an increase in activity: “This starts from the Samu regulator, but also from the ambulance drivers, iThere is also in hospitalization services, even access to the speech therapist…explains Doctor Mariam Annan. At all these levels, we lack the human resources to properly care for these patients.”

According to the survey by the French Hospital Federation, 60% of closed beds are because hospitals are unable to recruit enough caregivers.