The 103,393 nurses and 64,032 French liberal physiotherapists are in the sights of the Court of Auditors. The latter estimates that the expenses related to their care are in excessively strong increase (5.7% on average per year). A “boom in spending” mainly due to poorly controlled demographics. In fact, between 2000 and 2014, the number of nurses increased by 75.4% and that of physiotherapists by 55.8%.
At the start of the 2000s, this increase was supposed to compensate for the introduction of the 35-hour week. But today, the number of places open in nursing and physiotherapy training is still as large as the needs are met.
The Court of Auditors also regrets that nurses and physiotherapists are distributed “very unequally” on the territory. With a notable over-density in the South-East and in Corsica, which leads to a change in practices. “The number of acts performed and the fees received per patient are inversely proportional to the number of patients followed”, points out the Court. 800 euros per patient and per year in Corsica and Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur, compared to 159 euros in Pays de la Loire.
The Court of Auditors therefore calls for the implementation “without delay” of new “concrete measures” to control expenditure.
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