the government promises a “small revolution” in the care of patients

A report submitted to the Ministry of Health plans to create “supportive care”, less hospital-centered than palliative care. The imagined ten-year plan wants in particular to emphasize the training of health professionals and create “support centers”.

THE “French end-of-life model” wanted by Emmanuel Macron becomes clearer. A report presented to the Ministry of Health calls for the creation of “supportive care” to allow a “radical change” in the care of patients. This new offer would include a medical approach, strengthening palliative care, but above all would make it possible to better respond “social and psychological needs” patients and their loved ones, according to this document, revealed by Le Figaro and which we consulted on Friday December 8.

“It’s a small revolution that we’re proposing”, the Minister Delegate for Territorial Organization and Health Professions, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, told franceinfo. In May, she instructed the former president of the High Council of Public Health (HCSP) Franck Chauvin to “put it back together” the palliative care development strategy, considered unsatisfactory. In response to the “low proportion of French people accessing palliative care at the end of life”the report takes the form of a ten-year plan (2024-2034) aimed at “guarantee a right to access to support” throughout the territory, a right “yet already enshrined in law”but still too little respected.

The plan is based on fifteen measures, including the creation of mobile support care teams, made up of a doctor, a nurse and a psychologist. They would intervene in particular at home, drawing inspiration from the model of mobile palliative care teams, which mainly intervene in hospitals. Health professionals “Proximity” could call on these structures to better anticipate care and thus “promote staying at home”a wish expressed by many French people.

Create “support homes” for the sick

In a country which is seriously lacking in competent professionals in palliative care, the challenge of training appears to be decisive in guaranteeing equal access. The plan therefore provides for “massively develop the teaching of supportive care”with “an initial training module” for all health students, “the possibility of specializing in supportive medicine” and better continuing education.

“The top priority is the training of health professionals.”

Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Minister Delegate for Territorial Organization and Health Professions

at franceinfo

One of the main innovations of the report is the installation in ten years of one hundred “support homes”, including twenty from 2025. Inspired by living homes, halfway between care at home and at home. hospital, these accommodations with around ten beds would offer supportive care to patients at the end of their lives. They would be distinguished from hospital structures by “a low degree of medicalization”an opening to the outside and an offer of“accompaniement” close caregivers. “They are above all ‘houses’, places of welcome, where the place of listening and well-being is as important as that of care”insists the report. “Very clearly, this project will be retained,” promises Agnès Firmin Le Bodo.

“Mutual aid collectives” to involve citizens

Faced with the challenge of population aging and “the increase in loneliness”, the document calls for not placing all efforts on the health system. He demands “a mobilization” of the whole of society in favor of people at the end of life, in the name of the principle of “solidarity”. A support “reinforced” for caregivers is recommended, as is the development of volunteering at the bedside of the sick or in their daily tasks.

The report also calls for experimenting with “mutual aid collectives”made up of citizens to whom patients and their loved ones could turn, and to “increase awareness and involvement” of the youngest in supporting the sick.

The delegate minister intends to draw heavily from this report to unveil, in January, her ten-year strategy for developing supportive care. “There are things that we can put in place from January or February”, she specifies. Others will have to wait until the end of life bill is voted on, which will notably include access to active assistance in dying. Many times postponed, the presentation of this text will take place “rather towards the end of February”according to Agnès Firmin Le Bodo.