Elisabeth Borne releases 1 billion euros for caregivers

A sign of the priority she wants to give to health, Elisabeth Borne made one of her first back-to-school outings at the Rouen University Hospital on Thursday. The opportunity for the Prime Minister to announce several salary increase measures to compensate for the arduous work of caregivers. This set of measures represents an expenditure of 1 billion euros in a full year.

First of all, the night work of non-medical personnel (nurses, nursing assistants, etc.) will be upgraded. He will be paid 25% more than the day job. Currently, carers earn 1 euro more per hour worked at night, an amount temporarily increased to 2 euros by the former Minister of Health François Braun as part of the emergency measures taken in the summer of 2022. 25% will be "much more advantageous", because it will take into account salary levels linked to seniority, assures Matignon. Concretely, this revaluation of night work will represent a gain of 300 euros gross for a mid-career nurse performing 10 to 12 nights per month, 235 euros for a novice nurse and 495 euros if she is at the end of her career.

The executive is banking on this “shock of attractiveness” to recruit more caregivers. “This measure is necessary because the poor remuneration of night work creates difficulties in finding carers, which forces us to close beds and therefore reduce access to care”, justifies Matignon. In the same logic, the Prime Minister also announced a 20% increase in work on Sundays and public holidays, as well as an alignment of the remuneration of on-call duty between public and private.

For doctors, regardless of their status (public or private), the executive has decided to increase the on-call tariff by 50%. This measure is intended to be an incentive, while “too many public caregivers assume the permanence of care alone”, deplores Matignon, who wants that “guards are better shared and that in all territories all medical professionals can participate in it on the basis of volunteering”. For a mid-career practitioner who does four calls per month, the gain would be 560 euros more.

All these new measures will be included in the next Social Security budget for entry into force scheduled for January 1. Until then, the Braun measures which were due to end on August 31 have been extended until December 31. “The associative private sector, which had been excluded from Braun measures since 2022, welcomes with relief these announcements which restore a form of attractiveness to our establishments”, reacted Charles Guépratte, general manager of private non-profit hospitals.

The Prime Minister, who also took advantage of her trip to Rouen to visit a nursing home and a pharmacy, said she wanted to speed up the government's strategy for sharing tasks between doctors and paramedics. Measures will be included in the PLFSS to allow direct access (without going through the doctor) to physiotherapists, extend authorized acts to nurses, or even allow pharmacists to prescribe antibiotics directly (without a prescription) in the event of cystitis or angina, after a rapid diagnostic test.

“Task sharing would be nice if it works both ways. Doctors have been asking for years to be able to have vaccines in the fridge of their office in order to deliver them to patients, ”squeaks Agnès Giannotti, general practitioner in Paris and president of MG-France.

Especially since liberal doctors are also waiting for a “shock of attractiveness” for city medicine and are still waiting for a resumption of negotiations with Medicare on the consultation fee. "We are making the price of 30 euros a prerequisite," says the president of MG-France, who will be received next week by the new Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau.