“The firefighters and the Samu are already working together and I am convinced that tomorrow, if we bring them together on platforms to jointly regulate emergency calls, they will do it very well”, assures LREM deputy of Var Fabien Matras on Wednesday November 17 on franceinfo, after the unanimous adoption of his bill to create a unique emergency number. The rapporteur of the bill is “certain that if we question all of our compatriots, few are those who know the 13 numbers” emergency.
franceinfo: How will this experiment go?
Fabien Matras: The experiment will take place in a defense zone – an administrative division that covers one or two regions – within which different call regulation platform devices will be tested. People will continue to dial the same numbers and we will test what is behind it, that is to say how we organize the regulation of emergency calls between the different actors, the firefighters, the Samu, the paramedics. private, police or gendarmes. We want to try to identify the best platform: do we create a platform with the police, the gendarmes and the Samu? Do we only bring together the firefighters or the Samu? Do we only bring together the Samu and the permanence of care on one side and the gendarmes and police on the other? The defense zone has not yet been chosen, it will be up to the government to do so.
“We will experiment with it for two years and at the end of the two years, the best system will be chosen to be able to develop this type of platform on national territory with a single number that will be created or with the 112 that already exists.”
Fabien Matras, LREM deputy from Varto franceinfo
Why do you want a single emergency number rather than the ones we already know?
Today we have 13 emergency numbers. We can’t change the number like that overnight, so before dealing with the issue of the number, we’re going to deal with what’s behind it, how people regulate calls and how to make them work together so that we can then limit the number of numbers and arrive at a system that is much more readable for our fellow citizens. I myself did not know the 13 emergency numbers before becoming a member of Parliament and I am sure that if we ask all of our compatriots, few are those who know the 13 numbers.
Do you already have an idea of what the best platform could look like?
Personally, without a clear opinion at this stage, I think that we should have a platform with the firefighters and the Samu so that they can jointly regulate the emergency calls which concern the rescue of the person. 80% of firefighters’ interventions today concern personal assistance and therefore, in 80% of cases, firefighters, when they intervene, are already in consultation with the Samu. It is this model that we must succeed in generalizing.
In the United States, an ambulance is dispatched when it should not in six out of ten cases. The president of Samu is worried about a loss of opportunity for the patients. What do you answer?
I believe that we should not try to apply in France what can be done elsewhere. This is the aim of the experiment. We have to find the mechanism that works best. The Samu-Urgences de France federation was very worried at the beginning, but the solution that was retained in the bill satisfied it since it sent a press release to say that they were very happy with the outcome of the landing that had been found by the Senate and the National Assembly. I believe that at this stage, we have consensus. You have to experiment, find the right way. In the field, the firefighters and the Samu are already working together and I am convinced that tomorrow, if we bring them together on platforms to jointly regulate emergency calls, they will do it very well. Moreover, it is already done in about twenty departments. Common platforms already exist and things are going very well.