“The objective is that this is not yet another report”, assured François Braun, president of Samu-Urgences de France, Wednesday June 1 on franceinfo. Emmanuel Macron entrusted him on Tuesday with the production of a flash mission” to allow “from this summer” to consolidate emergency hospital services, some of which are threatened with closure for lack of resources. The head of emergencies at the Metz-Thionville CHR had already worked on the Head of State’s “health” program during the 2017 election campaign. “The crisis has disturbed us a little (…) but we have to restart the engine”, he explained. “The disease, we know more or less what it is, the treatments, we know most of them, now we have to write the prescription”summed up François Braun.
franceinfo: How can this not be just one more report on the hospital?
Francois Brown: The objective of the President and the Minister of Health is that this is not just another report, yet another report. We already have some on emergencies, the last one is from 2019, before the pandemic, so we already have leads. But, since then, the health crisis has sharpened the problems. This emergency crisis is not an emergency problem. Emergencies are at the interface between city medicine and hospital medicine. They concentrate the problems of both. This is the tip of the iceberg, of a much larger problem, and this is why general practitioners accompany me in this mission.
You were candidate Emmanuel Macron’s health referent during the presidential campaign, you contributed to his program on the issue. Did you alert him to the problems at the hospital?
We were worried, we had felt this difficulty which has sharpened in recent weeks in an extremely important way. Already, 5 years ago, he was very concerned about this problem. The “My Health 2022” plan, the pact for the overhaul of emergencies, which we had worked on with Agnès Buzyn, were already going in the right direction. The crisis has disturbed us a little in the implementation. We have to restart the engine and, I insist, we pretty much know what the disease is, the treatments, we know most of them, now we have to write the prescription.
120 emergency services are operating in degraded mode, what is the first thing to do?
Everyone must realize that the proper functioning of emergencies is our collective responsibility. We will have to inform our fellow citizens. A sprain that is three weeks old and still hurts a little does not require going to the emergency room. In many territories, our generalist colleagues provide answers that are not well known. We will have to operate this medical regulation, this collaboration between the city and the hospital, to allow us to continue to take care of people who really need emergency services. We will go and see the 4% of the territory where evening call duty is not provided by general practitioners. Having a doctor during the day is still too difficult, especially on public holidays, during bridges. There is still a bit of coordination to put into all of this.
Do we force them?
We must see why these guards are not made. Is it a problem of lack of doctors? Are these doctors too old to be on call? We know the overall diagnosis, our role will be to go into a little more detail, so that this prescription that we are going to make is adapted to each territory.
The question of the attractiveness of these professions and their remuneration arises. The Ségur de la Santé and the 180 euros allocated to caregivers in the process are not enough?
Of course, Ségur is not enough. We never said that the Ségur was enough. It was a little symptomatic treatment. It will be necessary to take into account the arduousness, what the health professionals tell us. Working at night, working on weekends, it’s very painful, nobody wants it. For a nurse, it’s an extra euro per hour net, in the evening. It is completely absurd. Of course, we will have to look into this problem.