French health service savaged over safety
Susan Bell in Paris
April 21, 2006
The Scotsman
NEARLY a quarter of French operating theatres should be closed because they do not meet safety standards, a report commissioned by the government warned this week in a blistering attack on a health service long vaunted as the world's best.
To add to the woes of French doctors and their patients, the Hospital Federation of France, which represents almost all public hospitals, said yesterday the health service faced a deficit of more than £1 billion for 2006. French hospitals receive £34 billion in funding each year.
The French health service has long been praised for its high standards of care and almost non-existent waiting lists.
But all this comes at a high price. The massive deficit has developed in part because the French take more prescription drugs than any other nation in Europe, but also because an ageing population is now putting more pressure on the health service while providing less tax revenue to fund it.
Professor Guy Vallancien, general secretary of the National Surgery Council, which prepared the report at the request of conservative health minister Xavier Bertrand, said it recommended that 113 operating theatres - 23 per cent of the country's total - be closed.
The hospitals concerned, which all perform fewer than 2,000 operations a year, "do not respond to the criteria of safety, quality and continuity of treatment," the report said.
"We accept that these hospitals carry on performing risky surgical activities when we wouldn't allow an airport, department store or a business to remain open in such unsafe conditions," Prof Vallancien said.
Among the examples of hospitals with surgery facilities branded "intolerable" is one that boasts two surgeons, one of whom has been suspended for professional incompetence and one who lives 30 miles away.
Doctors and managers at some of the 113 hospitals targeted by the report reacted angrily yesterday.
"It's hypocrisy to state that one is less well cared for in small hospitals. It's the social security system which has been bled dry and they're looking for scapegoats," said Christian Le Doyen, a surgeon at Villefranche, near Lyon.
The powerful Force Ouvrière union warned it would not accept closing operating theatres "in the name of profitability".
Mr Bertrand reacted to the recommendations by pledging "not to bury the report" although he said he "had no plans to close this or that operating theatre".
Paul Castel, president of the Conference of General Directors of Regional University Hospital Centres, said that hospital managers no longer knew which way to turn in order to make the budget cuts imposed upon them.
He said the £1 billion deficit was the equivalent of axing 23,000 hospital jobs.
"Either we will have to carve into funding for personnel, which represents 70 per cent of spending, or we will have to sacrifice investments, that is to say modernisation, which would be appalling," he said.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=598962006