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Private ambulance drivers continue their blockades

Avatar of Rédaction feuxdeforet.fr
Rédaction feuxdeforet.fr
4 min read
Late this afternoon, private ambulance drivers blocked the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris’s 8th arrondissement; they continue to oppose Article 80 of the medical transport reform. On Monday 5 November, private ambulance operators blocked the Paris ring road and the A4 motorway between 6.30 am and 10 pm in protest against Article 80, which requires hospitals to select private ambulances through a tendering processfor their patients since 1 October 2018. That same day, the Ministry of Health received a delegation of ambulance drivers at 4.00 pm, but this did nothing to quell their discontent; they are calling for the repeal of Article 80. For over a month, ambulance crews have been demonstrating and organising roadblocks in several major French cities to defend their profession, which they claim is being “put at risk” by this reform.
We contacted Mr Heuber, chairman of the French Collective of Ambulance and Emergency Medical Transport Staff, and we’d like to thank him for taking the time to answer our questions: 1) What do you think of Article 80?
  • "Healthcare professionals have a duty to provide the best possible care for patients; Article 80 will result in the exact opposite. Previously, any hospitalised patient who needed to be transferred – whether temporarily or not – between two hospitals could request to be transported by their own ambulance crew; today, that is no longer the case. It is the hospital that has requested the transport which will, following a tender process, allocate the ambulance crew. Worse still, the provision of therapeutic weekend care has come to an end; elderly people, adults and children will no longer benefit from this unless they pay for it themselves… how can anyone in their right mind impose this? A few examples are enough to show that Article 80 is completely illogical.".
2) How does this affect your profession?
  • "From a professional point of view, this will mean the complete disappearance of small businesses with one or just a few ambulances; what will remain are the large groups serving healthcare facilities and medium-sized companies handling transport for physiotherapy, chemotherapy, dialysis, consultations and so on. I’m not even going to mention the number of ambulance crew who will find themselves out of work overnight, even though the government wants to reduce that figure… a complete absurdity.".
3) What measures should the Department of Health take to raise the status of your profession?
  • "The Ministry of Health should, above all, agree to engage in discussions with all stakeholders in the ambulance sector and not limit itself to employers’ unions, which will naturally fight in line with their own internal policies rather than for the collective good. Yesterday, as today, the reality on the ground is the truth, and the urban myth that the social security deficit stems from medical transport is, of course, false; the truth therefore lies elsewhere, hence the importance of coming together to debate the issue and put forward the real arguments needed to bring about profound change across an entire profession."
4) "In twenty years in the profession, I have never seen such a decline – and, above all, one so drastic. The economic outlook was already complicated, given that the system was bound to undergo changes – just as our colleagues in the emergency medical services (SAMU) and the fire service have experienced – but a simple redefinition of priorities and/or working methods might perhaps have remedied these issues. By relentlessly hammering a profession with new laws that are killing it, we will inevitably find ourselves facing a human catastrophe, and I dare not even imagine, yet again, the patient caught in the middle who will inevitably have to suffer the ill-founded decisions of our politicians. A pipe dream to conclude... all of us gathered round a table for a day, a weekend, a week, a month to reshape the profession without leaving anyone by the wayside, and to continue doing what we’re meant to do as paramedics – remaining human for the patient’s sake, and for no other reason.".