Four years after the first “COVID lockdown” began in France, hospitalisations have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, although not in all regions of the country, and waiting times for doctors have increased, RFI reports.
Hospital activity in 2023 has “generally returned to the levels seen in 2019”, but some differences indicate that patients have not fully utilised healthcare services since the pandemic, the French Federation of Hospitals (FHF) said.
This is the conclusion of a report on the state of hospital care in France, published on Monday in partnership with France Info radio.
Some 3.5 million fewer people than expected have visited hospitals since 2019, and departments such as digestive surgery, neurology and rheumatology, which cut back on care to make room for COVID patients, have not recovered.
These departments have seen 11-12 per cent fewer patients than expected in 2023, with, for example, 260,000 fewer endoscopies performed, affecting patients’ health and leading to delays in detecting some cancers.
The federation speaks of a “public health debt” where patients put their health care on hold, leading to delays in treatment.
One explanation for the decline in hospitalisations is the closure of beds in public hospitals over the past few years, mainly due to difficulties in recruiting health workers. Another reason for the decline in hospitalisations is that patients themselves are delaying treatment.
According to the report, based in part on a patient survey, six out of ten people have delayed some form of treatment in the past five years either because the wait for an appointment was too long or because it cost too much.
The Federation warns that waiting times for a doctor’s appointment have “doubled in five years” for most specialities.
For example, waiting times for a GP appointment have increased from four days in 2019 to ten days in 2024, and for an appointment with a gynaecologist or cardiologist from one month to two months. Emergency rooms have made up for this shortfall, with 54 per cent of people saying they have used emergency care for situations that were not emergencies, up from 42 per cent in 2019.
