“We have the walls, we have the beds, the equipment, it’s the staff that’s missing” alerts emergency physician Patrick Pelloux

The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, assured this Saturday, January 13 that “32 billion additional euros” will be allocated to the health system “within five years”. A promise which leaves doubtful Patrick Pelloux, resident of the foundation of hospital emergency doctors of France, who asks above all for additional hiring in hospitals.

“We have the walls, we have the beds, we have the materials, we have the equipment, it’s the staff that’s missing”, reacts Saturday January 13 on franceinfo Patrick Pelloux, president of the foundation of hospital emergency doctors in France. A little earlier, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, traveling to the Dijon University Hospital, announced an investment of 32 billion euros for the French health system “in the next five years”. The emergency doctor wonders about this money “fell from the sky” and its destination.

franceinfo: Gabriel Attal wants to invest an additional 32 billion euros within five years, where should he put this money?

Patrick Pelloux: First of all, where is he going to find them? I remind you that we had a financing bill which called for enormous savings, several hundred million, and there, suddenly, 32 billion fell from the sky. For a former minister who worked at Bercy, this is quite surprising since his predecessors spent their time telling me that there were no resources and no money. Invest in what, I don’t know. In the walls, it’s useless, we have the walls, we have the beds, we have the material, we have the equipment, it’s the staff that’s missing. Now, here, Gabriel Attal is talking about investments, not personnel and that is a problem. When they did the Ségur de la santé, they removed four rungs from the hospital practitioner in terms of their seniority. Let’s move on to the bonus system which, I remind you, does not add value to retirement at all, bonuses are a scam by the liberal world. Obviously it didn’t fail, the staff left. What we lack is staff to open beds.

Gabriel Attal recognizes that there is a problem of attractiveness for these professions, is he aware of this?

Probably, I don’t know. We are so disappointed by the departure of Aurélien Rousseau [qui a démissionné le 20 décembre de son poste de ministre de la Santé après l’adoption du projet de loi immigration NDLR], to change ministers every 9 to 12 months. There has been no consistent policy since 2017 on what they want, on health. We look at the composition of the cabinets: what is happening is that all those who worked under Sarkozy on the hospital-company are returning. Obviously this worries us because the blow to the public hospital service is not far away. You have the total bankruptcy of public surgery, you have the total bankruptcy of operating theaters, the total bankruptcy of access to technical platforms and of staff recruitment, which means that this year, they are planning to bring in 20 000 doctors from foreign countries to run public hospitals. This means that they want to attract doctors that we would take from foreign countries, and that these countries need, to put them in France and keep the hospitals running. There is a political illogic which is absolutely dramatic in terms of the image of our country.

There is also, in Gabriel Attal’s words, the desire to use emergencies less, to do more prevention, do you validate this proposal?

They themselves removed the word “prevention” from the title of the ministry which had appeared under François Braun and which had been confirmed under Aurélien Rousseau. What have they done in terms of prevention over the past two years? Nothing. To limit head injuries in people who travel with clean vehicles such as bicycles, two-wheelers, rollerblades, scooters, which cause head injuries to increase, we told them: “impose the helmet on everyone”. We were told “Ah no, no, no, we can’t because there, we’re going to have too many problems.” I’m quite desperate actually because we’re going to experience the cabinet casting at the public hospital. These are just people who spent their time bashing us, discrediting us, taking away social dialogue. I can tell you, everyone, that it’s not going to be happy.