Lack of doctors, influx of tourists, lack of beds… around fifty hospitals are in the red this summer

Le CHU de Nantes dans la tourmente depuis les révélations des syndicats. MAXPPP – Patrick Lefevre

At the Nantes University Hospital, the unions denounced the death of four people due to excessively long waits in the emergency room. The management only admits one… The situation remains critical at the end of the summer season.

Shortage of doctors and staff in hospitals, influx of tourists, lack of beds… The situation is deteriorating in the country's university hospitals. In Nantes, the unions issued a press release in which they denounce the overcrowding in the emergency rooms. According to the unions, four patients died in a few weeks due to the excessively long waiting times in the emergency room.

On BFMTV a union representative explains: “These are people who could not be hospitalized due to a lack of beds and who, for some of them, had tests that were too late because there was not enough space to do them”. A direct link between waiting times and the deaths of patients is totally denied by the hospital management, which only confirms a death that allegedly “occurred after initial nursing and medical care was implemented upon the patient's arrival at the emergency room, in accordance with current protocols”, according to a member of management quoted by Le Figaro.

The Minister of Health acknowledges that around fifty hospitals are under pressure

Elsewhere, many emergency services are being forced to close due to a lack of staff. This information was confirmed by Frédéric Valletoux, the resigning Minister Delegate for Health, who assured our colleagues at Ouest-France that around “fifty hospitals” were “currently under pressure". Before adding: “It's a little better than last summer and in any case tensions are not as high as during the one in 2022”.

A problem that we find every summer pretty much everywhere. Laurence Bernard, director of the Nord-Isère Hospital Group in Bourgoin-Jallieu, explains on France Bleu Isère why the emergency rooms closed for several days in August: “We have had difficulty finding emergency doctors for years, but we have so far been able to compensate with temporary staffing arrangements”. We had to make efforts on the schedules but the system now has its limits: “We are reaching a kind of breaking point after having tried everything”, deplores the director. Fortunately, the holidays are coming to an end.

Up to 9 hours of waiting in Brest

Emergency rooms struggle every year to get through the summer. Last week, the president of the Samu urgences de France union, Marc Noizet, estimated the situation to be “at least equal to, or even worse than, that of 2023”, with “rolling closures” in a large part of the territory, except in Île-de-France and in a few places hosting Olympic Games events. The Minister of Health, Frédéric Valletoux, highlighted “delicate situations to regulate”. As at the Brest University Hospital, where “The average wait time from arrival to discharge from the emergency room… has been as high as 9 hours" in recent weeks, but is usually closer to “6 or 7 hours," he said. Still…