The Defender of Rights submitted his annual activity report. Claims for medical reasons have increased and point to abuse by healthcare professionals and patients.
The Defender of Rights has not been idle this year. More than 100,000 files have passed through the hands of Jacques Toubon, freshly appointed to the post, who returned this morning its first annual activity report.
This “photograph of French society”, as he likes to call it, is not the most encouraging. Complaints linked to abuses by the security forces (police, gendarmerie, customs, prison administration, etc.) have exploded (+ 23%); discrimination is always at the top of the referrals. A “terrible report of failures”, we can read.
The law on the end of life, poorly applied
Claims for medical reasons have also grown, although they represent only 3.08% of all complaints. “The year 2014 was marked by an increase in complaints and requests for information relating to the rights of patients at the end of life,” explains the report.
Thus, the provisions provided for by the Leonetti law remain unknown to patients and their entourage, as well as to healthcare professionals. The use of advance directives remains extremely rare. And when a person of trust is appointed, it is too little solicited. The bill tabled in December by MEPs Alain Claeys and Jean Leonetti should remedy these shortcomings.
Abuse by healthcare professionals
The complaints evoke serious breaches of professional ethics and deviant behavior on the part of the latter. Cases of abuse of weakness and violence against the elderly have been reported (insults, brutality, neglect, etc.).
Discrimination does not spare the medical community either. It encourages patients to give up care, a “problematic situation, especially for fragile populations, in a precarious situation or vulnerable by their age”.
More procedural patients
Other claims relate to medical or surgical errors. Beyond simple requests for compensation, and payment of compensation for the damage suffered, it appears that “more and more patients are looking for sanctions (disciplinary, criminal) which could be imposed on healthcare professionals. health ”, writes the rapporteur.
The numerous bill disputes, sometimes for small sums, “arise from the difficult economic situation of patients, with ever increasing financial constraints for health establishments”. Certain episodes of violence against health professionals, on the part of patients or their entourage, have also been reported.
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