While outpatient surgery is seen as being able to save health insurance, the question arises as to whether it can constitute a real source of savings.
It is Agnès Buzyn who makes it one of the flagship measures of her “health insurance rescue” plan: the promotion of outpatient surgery… In simpler terms: in the morning and in the evening at home, between the two, a surgical intervention. You might think it’s anecdotal. Yet, in the United States, 80 to 90% of surgeries are performed this way. Less than one in two in France. And soon 70%?
It seems inevitable evolution, but on the finance side, we have to see it twice. Few studies refer to the subject, and the majority of reports, however, conclude that outpatient practice is more cost-effective than conventional surgery. But this would be without taking into account other costs hidden at first glance: for example the ambulance, home help or a side effect of the outpatient: the need for more staff to take care of heavier patients. who now occupy the services.
Are we not sacrificing the health of patients on the altar of the economy?
We could indeed have a certain form of doubt… However, the most recent surveys, regardless of the country, are unanimous: patients who have benefited from outpatient surgery are satisfied and ready to start over. And the doctors who are specialists even say that economic arguments must be swept aside, in order to put forward the improvement of quality, at all levels of the act: anesthetic drugs with fewer side effects; surgeons who had to put their technique back into play, favor small scars and use cameras inside the body. Finally, shortening the deadlines requires the establishment of an effective organization based on anticipation, but also information for patients, neglected for too long in France, explaining the reluctance of some to offer it to their patients.
Outpatient care is not just about small surgeries
This surgery is not prohibited any intervention, even several hours and under general anesthesia: for example, we can mention the removal of the gallbladder, kidney stones, certain operations for breast cancer, thyroid cancer, complicated knee surgery. , shoulder … There is a goal that may seem incredibly ambitious: less than 1% of patients only, in the long term, should stay overnight in the hospital. A speech that makes many doctors cringe, but the hospital management has decided, it recommends the application of this technique as often as possible! A significant argument, the rate of nosocomial infections, these infections that we catch in the hospital and which cost us more than 10,000 deaths per year, are divided by three.
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