It is at Korian’s headquarters that the daily life of the nursing homes it manages is defined… to the nearest penny. The management controllers refine large spreadsheets: budgets then sent to the directors of retirement homes. Each establishment has its budgetary objectives. First item: catering. And from the first line, an acronym: the CRJ. “It was a real workhorse for Korian. The CRJ is the budget allocated for a resident, or his ‘daily cost price’. It includes breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and evening snack, as well as drinks. It is 4.35 euros“, explains Samuel Royer, ex-director of Ehpad Korian from 2014 to 2017, to the magazine “Cash Investigation” (replay).
To meet this objective of 4.35 euros, including all meals for a day, everything is quantified to the nearest gram, according to a document dating from 2016. And beware of the response from headquarters in the event of a discrepancy with the target set. At Korian, there is even a tradition: the Flop 5.”The Flops, I was part of it because I continued to serve cheese against all oddssays the former director. My cost of daily income has been affected, and therefore, we present this to you in the region. We class you… it’s not the best. They are the worst. There’s Flop 5, and then there’s Flop 60. It’s very humiliating. We present this in front of all your colleagues or all the other directors by pointing the finger at you and saying: here are the bad things!“
“Following the rise in certain food products…”
From time to time, Korian knows how to pamper its residents. This Sunday, in the nursing homes of the group, it is a day of celebration, that of grandmothers. So the head office has planned a good little dish on the menu, a gourmet classic of French gastronomy: an onion soup accompanied by croutons. A good little meal in perspective… Except that the headquarters sent an email. The chef des chefs writes: “Hello chefs, following the increase in certain food products, you will find attached a file indicating the recipe changes to be made in your menus.”
On the menu where Onion Soup is indicated, the mention “and its croutons” has been crossed out. “They will save money on croutons“, specifies the one who managed two Ehpad Korian before his burn out. “It’s so symbolic of the problem of groups like Korian that they are no longer at all in their core business, in the objective they have set themselves. The purpose of an Ehpad is to take care of the elderly, fragile, dependent“, recalls Samuel Royer. He attacked Korian at the industrial tribunal, but his request was declared inadmissible.
>> Interviewed by Elise Lucet, the managing director of Korian France believes that “It’s a bit caricatural to talk about removing croutons to save money. The idea that people can tell me that I’m starving the elderly revolts me. I don’t think that’s the reality in our nursing homes” .
Excerpt from “Ehpad: time for accounts?”, an investigation by Marie Maurice, broadcast Tuesday March 1, 2022 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2.
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