Unsurprisingly, the civil chamber of the Mulhouse judicial court validated the takeover of the Trois-Frontières clinic in Saint-Louis by the GHRMSA, the hospital group for the Mulhouse and Sud-Alsace region, on Thursday 10 November. It will be effective on January 1, 2023. The Trois-Frontières clinic is very indebted, the establishment had been placed in receivership in July 2022.
The recovery by the GHRMSA was feared by the inhabitants and caregivers of the sector. In its project, the hospital group in the Mulhouse and South-Alsace region provides for the closure of the operating room, cardiology, or even the continuing care unit. There would remain in Saint-Louis only a chemotherapy service and a general medicine service. “It is a service that welcomes patients who do not fall under a specific specialty, in practice, they are often elderly people, who then require placement in nursing homes”, explains Doctor Guy Ventré, President of the Medical Establishment Committee of the clinic. As for emergencies, “there will be no change, the service remains in place, it is already managed by the GHRMSA.”
“Dramatic consequences for patients”
For the patients, the doctor evokes “dramatic consequences. Some patients will choose not to go to Mulhouse, will delay their appointment. You often also have to be seen by anesthesiologists before a surgical procedure, it’s been several round trips to Mulhouse.”
Guy Ventré, like other doctors at the clinic as well as caregivers in the sector and “all goodwill”, have already planned to meet in mid-November, to possibly organize a new demonstration, but also to find high-level political support. The objective is to obtain the approval of the Regional Health Agency for the creation of a technical platform, an operating block, as there is currently one.
For her part, the mayor of Saint-Louis, Pascale Schmidiger, fears in the long term complete closure
of the establishment. Nearly a thousand demonstrators had gathered in early November in Saint Louis
to express their opposition to a closure of the Trois Frontières clinic.