French health service savaged over safety

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.

Hmm... frogs have been butchered by quacks. I did not know that such sophisticated ones have been maligned so badly. After all, they should be put on pedestals and worshiped.:)

France has been dominated by folks who only have literary talent, but little else. Such people are not good at solving real world problems because their efforts are devoted to creating fictions which cannot hold up in the real world. No wonder most of them are socialists.

I'm afraid even a number of your fellow Britons (who are libertarian-leaning conservatives) are duped into believing the French model is marvellous.

Case in point - Andrew Stuttaford:

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_09_20_corner-archive.asp#013639

"It's important not to stretch too far when looking to draw wider meaning from the appalling number of heat-wave related deaths this summer in France. The French family is not about to fall apart, and France's healthcare system is better than anything across the English Channel. That said, a death toll on the scale that occurred was more than a series of individual tragedies, and it deserves more of a response than it seems to have got..."

The French healthcare model is a little different from the Anglo world's healthcare systems. Socialistic they all are, each is a bit different from others.

In France, the government forces everyone to buy health insurance from private insurance companies. Those who can't afford to buy it will have the insurance costs reimbursed by the government.

In Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, health is basically funded by tax money and you don't really need any insurance to undergo any treatments, but private healthcare is available for elective surgery (cancer operations, prostate, etc). Some procedures such as organ transplants and emergency medicine for car crash victims etc are the exclusive domain of government healthcare. Some drugs are funded by government subsidies (eg Panadol/Tyenhol), and you pay the full costs for those that aren't.

From what I read of Canada's health system, it is reputed to be a government-run system covered by government surcharges and tax money. There are things covered by government money and those that aren't. You don't pay much for government-subsidised things, and full costs for those that aren't. But unlike Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, all procedures that are covered by government subsidies are NOT allowed to be done on a private basis (while certain procedures do have private competitions in British and Australian and NZ systems). And for medicines, if it is not government subsidised the drug simply won't be on sale in Canada. (Which is not the case for New Zealand, Australia, or Britain. In these countries approved medicines which are not subsidised are sold at full costs)

Hope this helps.

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