in Lille, how the healthcare access service relieves emergency room congestion

Rejected patients, and admissions limited to vital emergencies: triaging patients is a sometimes brutal response to the crisis in hospitals. In Lille (North)some of the people who call 15 are redirected. 550,000 calls arrive here every year, and they are not always for life-threatening emergencies. The regulation assistant makes the call to the SAS, the care access service. A GP takes the call. Its support can range from simple advice to finding an appointment.

The SAS has been tested for a year in Lille. A rest efficientaccording to Dr. Roch Joli, the head of the service of the SAMU du Nord. “There are 10% of people who would have been to the emergency room, to whom we would have already sent an ambulance ourselves, because (…) we had no other emergency care offer to offer than going to the emergency room“, he explains. Many trips to the emergency room are thus avoided. Some doctors keep slots for unscheduled care. In 2021, the Lille SAMU SAS managed more than 200,000 calls.