How to avoid cases of abuse and other malfunctions in nursing homes? A more effective control of these establishments must go through a “specialized service” of the State, endowed with financial skills and authorized to also inspect the headquarters of large private groups, pleaded before senators trade unionists representing the inspectors of the Regional Agencies of Health (ARS), Wednesday March 16.
This new service would have a “national jurisdiction” for “steer” controls, and would come “in support” to the ARS for whom this mission was until now “not a priority”detailed Aissam Aimeur, president of the union of public health pharmacist inspectors.
The agents of this new structure should have “medical, pharmaceutical but also financial skills” and be able to inspect group headquarters such as Orpea or Korian, Aissam Aimeur further explained to the Senate Social Affairs Committee.
Currently, controls only target individual establishments, but the latter often have little room for maneuver in their daily management. “Their budget is defined by headquarters” where the inspectors do not go, lamented Stéphane Bernard, of the national union of inspectors of health and social action.
Before the senators, the representatives of the inspectors’ unions also pleaded for a reinforcement of the human resources allocated to their profession, currently “grossly insufficient” according to them. Of the 2,700 officers authorized to carry out checks, only about 230 are actually dedicated to inspections of the care of the elderly or patients. Among them, 49 are specifically dedicated to retirement homes.
The government has just announced the recruitment of 150 additional agents, to allow the ARS to inspect all of the 7,500 nursing homes in France within two years. This effort nevertheless comes after a drop in the workforce in recent years: the number of medical inspectors fell from 297 in 2014 to 181 last year, lamented Thierry Fouéré, from the union of medical inspectors of public health.
Questioned Tuesday before the same Senate committee, the journalist Victor Castanet, author of the book-investigation The Gravediggers which highlights dysfunctions within Orpea, had already pleaded for the establishment of a “administrative authority” control.