After submitting the conclusions of a “flash mission” on the state of emergency services in France last week, the emergency doctor Francois Braun was appointed Minister of Health this Monday, July 4. He succeeds Brigitte Bourguignon in a tense context, in the midst of a hospital crisis and while many hospitals fear closures due to the lack of caregivers this summer.
Emergency physician François Braun appointed Minister of Health and Prevention (Elysée) #redesign#AFPpic.twitter.com/7ZYKQCUB9U
– Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) July 4, 2022
For her new government, the Prime Minister has this time favored a profile from civil society and not from the political class. François Braun is a hospital, head of the SAMU of Moselle and head of the emergency department at the CHU of Metz-Thionville. He is also the president of Samu-Urgences de France, the first union of emergency physicians in the country.
Aged 59, he was also the “health” referent of the candidate Emmanuel Macron during the presidential campaign, helping him shape his health agenda.
Braun report: a “flash mission” to regulate access to emergencies
On June 30, François Braun returned to the Prime Minister the conclusions of a “flash mission” entrusted by the president himself in order to try to limit the damage in hospitals this summer. From 41 proposals written on 60 pages figure in particular the improvement of patient orientation and information, by encouraging the population to call the SAMU in the event of a problem rather than going directly to the emergency room. Another part of the Braun report concerns liberal medicine and wants to encourage city doctors to take care of patients who are not usually in their clientele, with an increase of 15 euros for consultations for patients sent by the 15th.
He is also one of the founders and fervent defenders of the SAS, the “care access service” aimed at better associating general medicine and SAMU in order to unclog emergencies.
A contested personality
François Braun and his practices do not, however, not unanimous within the medical world. The Association of Emergency Physicians of France is already opposed to the measure aimed at taking care of patients on the telephone rather than in the emergency room, denouncing a “disruption of public service which will put the population in danger“.
In a portrait dedicated to him by the newspaper Marianne in June, he is described as “without qualms“, “rather on the side of the management of the hospital and the rulers than that of the caregivers in the field“.”The ERs here are in bad shape. I don’t see how he is going to manage solutions on a national scale while at the local level he is not doing well”adds Patricia Schneider, representative of the Sud-Santé-Sociaux union.
In 2020, he notably made himself known at the time of the Covid-19 crisis, by organizing patient transfers by medicalized TGV leaving from the Grand-Est towards the Atlantic coast and by helicopter towards Germany.
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