Health establishments could benefit from a substantial envelope to take “the digital turn”. Hospital directors remain cautious about this promise.
Less than two months before leaving Avenue Duquesne, Marisol Touraine continues to operate the printing press. After the bonuses granted to young hospital practitioners, the Minister of Health announced Wednesday, in a press release, 550 million euros over 5 years to support health establishments in the digital shift.
The Minister first launched the “e-course” program. Its objective will be to improve patient care and facilitate exchanges between health professionals. The digital solutions tested for 3 years as part of the “Digital healthcare territory” program will thus be offered to medico-social professionals throughout France by 2021 (dematerialized appointment scheduling, geolocation of mobile teams, management and availability of beds, etc.).
150 million euros to start …
“150 million euros will be committed over the period 2017-2021 to the Regional Health Agencies (ARS) responsible for piloting the deployment within their region, including 20 million euros from 2017”, specifies the ministry.
Incidentally, it also announces the deployment of another program “e-Hospital 2.0”. The objective is again to develop the information systems of health establishments. Concretely, it will be a question of financially supporting, in the extension of the actions undertaken within the framework of the program “Digital hospital”, the development of another list of digital solutions (results of online analyzes, report of examination of ‘imagery, etc).
… to which will be added 400 million
In total, 400 million euros will be invested until 2021 for this second project. In short, large sums that hospital directors welcome with caution. Some people point out that Marisol Touraine will most certainly no longer be Minister of Health in a few weeks.
Contacted by Why actor, David Gruson, General Delegate of the FHF (1), confides: “These funding commitments are made for the future. We will therefore ensure that they are well covered by effective means over the coming years ”.
Directors of doubtful hospitals
At the present time, these are the questions that predominate, because the hospital directors indicate that they have not obtained any information on the effective coverage of this envelope, despite their requests to the ministry.
David Gruson continues by recalling that the Minister of Health had already announced an investment plan for hospitals of 2 billion euros in May 2016. And at that time, the general delegate of the FHF had also asked for details to know the sources of funding. “Details that we are still waiting”, he concludes. The FHF is already indicating that it will oppose any new constraints on health establishments.
(1) The Hospital Federation of France.
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