The time has come to operate. “The diagnosis, we know it, it is shared”, launched Dr. Braun, opening Monday at Le Mans the debates of this “CNR health”. A major consultation involving caregivers, local elected officials and users of the health system, invited to “discuss freely on the solutions, not on the problems”.
The emergencies are numerous, between on the one hand “citizens who have difficulty obtaining appointments, or finding a treating doctor” – approximately 6 million are in this case, including 600,000 suffering from chronic diseases – and on the other hand, health professionals “exhausted after two years of health crisis” and who also have “difficulty finding meaning in their professions”, he noted.
Symptoms which attest to the urgency of the treatment, which will not be done “not from the avenue de Ségur”, affirmed the minister, repeating one of his favorite formulas: “The problems are in the territories, the solutions too”.
The choice of Sarthe, a department that has become the emblem of medical deserts, for this first meeting, is therefore not innocent, even if “the problems of Sarthe are specific”, he underlined, as well as those from “east of the Moselle” where he worked for a long time as an emergency doctor, or even those of Le Hâvre, city of his deputy minister Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, present at his side.
Welcomed by the mayor of Le Mans, Stéphane Le Foll, who wished “that everything that allows local initiatives be encouraged and helped”, the minister promised discussions “on the place of elected officials” and “the attractiveness of territories” .
– “Very short-term responses” –
“Elected officials have a central role to play”, added Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, in her role as Minister in charge of Territorial Organization and Health Professions, praising the quality of “key relay” of these “essential links” .
On the verge of potentially divisive debates on guards or the installation of doctors, “we now need to go beyond the postures and work hand in hand”, she however warned.
“The French expect very short-term answers from us for equal access to health”, while “the waiting times are constantly getting longer”, added the minister. Faced with “historic challenges”, the government intends to “accelerate” on the basis of the “reforms undertaken under the previous five-year term”: multiplication of health centers (more than 2,000 to date) and “territorial professional health communities” ( 300 in operation, 200 others planned), extension of the “care access service” (active in around twenty departments).
But “even if we are in Le Mans, 24 hours will not be enough,” she said. The executive, however, seems to want to move quickly: François Braun has thus indicated previously that the 2023 budget of the Secu, examined next week in the Assembly, will have “design to be enriched by the proposals from the CNR health” – a body “complementary” to “parliamentary democracy”, he assured.
In his closing speech expected around 4:00 p.m., the Minister of Health should, according to his entourage, “engage the dynamics and specify the timetable”, but also explain how he intends to take up “the challenge of access to care”, placed “at the heart of the issue” by the President of the Republic.
A head of state who also called on the French on Monday to participate in the CNR, in the upcoming debates or via the conseil-refondation.fr platform, in order to “transform” the country “towards and against all blockages”.
