Private clinics announce a strike with “total suspension” of their activities, including emergencies, from June 3 to 5

The FHP (federation of private hospitalization) calls for a “total suspension” of the activities of private clinics from June 3, including emergency services, to request a reassessment of their prices by 500 million euros for 2024. The movement is supported by five of the six liberal doctors' unions currently participating in conventional negotiations with health insurance, on doctors' remuneration for the next five years. “From May, patients about to have surgery will be called to reschedule their procedure. It’s unbearable to get to this point,” warned Philippe Cuq, visceral surgeon in Toulouse and co-president of the Avenir Spé Le Bloc union, on Thursday. “From the 3rd, everything will stop. The situation is going to be dramatic, I don’t know how the public authorities are going to do it.”

Specialist doctors will begin to contact patients to deprogram them “between May 15 and 20” so “that on June 3 there are the minimum number of hospitalized patients,” added Philippe Cuq. “We will warn that we will not be able to take care of them” from June 3, he said. The suspension of activities of private clinics, total from June 3 to 5, will extend until June 9 for emergencies and ongoing care, indicated the FHP and private doctors during a joint press conference. The movement is “renewable”, and of indefinite duration, they clarified. “Emergencies will also be referred to the public hospital. We will only maintain dialysis for chronic patients, otherwise they die,” indicated Lamine Gharbi, president of the FHP.

Well aware of budgetary constraints, two days before a possible downgrading of France by the rating agencies, the clinics are not asking the State for additional money compared to the 105.6 billion euros voted in Parliament in fall for health establishments, but a better distribution of the envelope between public and private. And anger has been brewing for several weeks, without the Minister for Health Frédéric Valletoux having found the means to appease it. “We are stigmatized, we are mistreated. They say that we only have simple cases, patients with Gold Platinum vital cards, that we make our margins on cosmetic surgery. It's wrong! », indignant Lamine Gharbi, president of the FHP, recalling that the private sector provides 55% of surgery, 75% of outpatient surgery, 40% of care for patients with cancer... “Our prices for Appendicitis, hip prosthesis are fixed by the State and are 30% cheaper than in the public hospital. The more the private sector works, the more it saves Social Security,” he added.

The government recently announced that clinics would benefit from a 0.3% increase in their price scale in 2024, compared to 4.3% for public hospitals. The 500 million requested by the FHP would allow private clinics to have an increase equivalent to that of public hospitals, to be able to compensate for inflation and increase salaries to the same level as in the public sector. “With these prices, we cannot increase the salaries of caregivers, nurses who see the public hospital on the other side of the street, which has the floodgates open to upgrade its employees,” laments Lamine Gharbi, affirming that a nurse earns 15% more today in the public sector than in the private sector.

For their part, the doctors' unions support the movement on two counts. On the one hand, 40,000 independent specialists work in clinics, and fear seeing their work tools weakened. “The Liberals support the clinic strike because we cannot work without them. In Occitania the share of clinics is higher than that of the public hospital,” indicated Jérôme Marty, president of the Ufml union. On the other hand, they believe that the Health Insurance proposals, in the conventional negotiations underway for more than a year, are too weak. While it wants to move quickly and reach an agreement by the end of May, before the European elections, negotiations are at a standstill. In particular, they are demanding an increase of 500 million euros for the revaluation of the technical procedures of specialists, a large part of which has not changed since the 1990s. “The price of a colonoscopy has not increased by a cent since 1990, for example,” indicates Franck Devulder, gastroenterologist and president of the CSMF. The revision of the common classification of medical procedures (CCM), at the heart of the negotiation, includes 13,000 procedures, ranging from radiology to technical procedures, including resuscitation.