“At Sainte-Musse hospital, who counts on us?”
“The patient expecting quality care, the hospital worker, the doctor wishing to practice in good conditions, the society expecting...”
His observation reflects the 3 pillars and the 3 challenges guiding the institution's action: quality of care, quality of work, and efficiency, particularly economic. Thus, this action was illustrated by the mobilization of teams to cope, during the holidays and at the start of this year, with a combination of an exceptional need for unscheduled care for patients sometimes requiring heavy management, a very strong epidemic of flu and winter viruses, and an insufficient supply of care outside healthcare establishments and certain private practitioners, with many unscheduled care centers and private clinics closed.
PLAN BLANC Yet hospitals and healthcare institutions, in connection with the ARS, prepare for these periods for several weeks and are capable of triggering a plan blanc to overcome an exceptional episode. According to Yann Le Bras: “We must learn lessons from these very testing periods for patients and teams, and I salute their flawless dedication.”
How much longer, despite this preparation and mobilization, will hospitals and a few open practices and SOS médecins be left alone during the holidays or in August to face patients' needs without regulation of private healthcare provision, leave, and clinic closures? To drastically improve vaccination rates to protect patients and our structures, as we succeeded in doing for bronchiolitis? It is urgent to address these fundamental issues without prejudice or bias,” the director further wonders.
Evoking the context in which the hospital operates, he adds: “Constantly evolving patient needs and expectations, strained medical demographics, major budgetary and economic constraints. This context is difficult and weighs on daily life as well as on the sustainability and choices of our institutions. This context is difficult and weighs on daily life as well as on the sustainability and choices of our institutions, with limited room for maneuver to remedy it.”
But this period is also a source of exciting challenges, an opportunity to build a new healthcare system, based more on the relevance of care, on medical and organizational innovations, new professions, and new cooperations between actors. In other times in contemporary history, there has been no shortage of constraints, sometimes even heavier ones, and communities and leaders have designed new systems and known how to adapt.
With lucidity, pragmatism, and also optimism!”