"Out of Service" Investigation. Closed Beds, Flight of Caregivers, Deficit: Why Is the Hospital in Trouble?
If people complain little about the hospital, it's because "we can't turn away new patients," says Jean-Marie Woehl from Colmar. Photo: Vanessa Meyer/ L'Alsace
Jean-Marie Woehl has spent his entire career in hospitals, where he gradually took on responsibilities within the medical establishment commission (CME) of the Colmar Civil Hospitals, then the group commission of the Alsace Center and finally within the national conference (he is vice-president) which brings together 700 non-university hospitals in France.
He is therefore regularly in contact with the ministry to defend the profession and try to find concerted solutions to the multiple crises in his sector.
He knows the hospital crisis well, and above all, he knows how to analyze its causes and consequences. To get to the bottom of the issue, we asked him four questions that help us understand the challenges facing public health in France.
Charged with a public service mission, the hospital refuses no one, unlike the sometimes overwhelmed liberals who filter patients. This explains why few respondents to our survey criticize the hospital, which handles 85% of emergency cases . They are always welcome.
Unions and healthcare workers regularly denounce hospital bed closures, which have accelerated since Covid. But how does a hospital end up closing beds? And why does it do so? Jean-Marie Woehl explains that it's primarily a sign of a lack of qualified staff .
Since Covid, a crisis in vocations has impacted the public hospital, which is experiencing a shortage of caregivers, particularly among paramedics. How did we reach this breaking point in the space of barely 10 years? For Jean-Marie Woehl, this is primarily due to the type of patients, suffering from increasingly serious and complex pathologies, and the burden of care , which increasingly falls on the hospital as the private sector withdraws from it.
Public hospitals are widening their deficits and cutting back on staff costs and investments to cope, at the risk of putting themselves in the red for the future. The introduction of fee-for-service pricing has a lot to do with it. But today, it's investment that must be supported, explains Jean-Marie Woehl.
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