The use of airborne medical evacuations of patients requiring specific care in particular Corsica between 800 and 1,000 people a year. Patients who are evacuated with specially equipped planes to the continent, thanks to a service provider affiliated with the hospitals of Bastia and’Ajaccio.
However, deeming, with an order issued on May 20, that the last procedure for the award of the public contract for sanitary evacuations (Evasan) had not been regular, the judge in closed session of the administrative court of Bastia threw the stone in the sea. The society Altagna, which has been collaborating with the hospitals of Bastia and Ajaccio since 2013, has seen the contract it just won questioned. He immediately made use of the Council of State to contest this decision, supported in his approach by Corsican hospitals. The hearing that was held yesterday in Paris, however, seems, at this stage, to invoke confirmation of the decision of the judge of Bastia.
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Concretely, the summary judge of the administrative court of Bastia had considered that the procedure implemented to select the best candidate, known as the “procedure with negotiation”, should not exist in the case of the Evasan market. Oyonnair, the loser of this tender, considered that the use of this procedure had undermined the equal treatment of candidates.
The risk of having to restart the procurement procedure
To justify their choice, the island’s hospitals relied on an article of the public procurement code which specifies that recourse to the negotiation procedure is essential. “when the contract cannot be awarded without prior negotiation due to particular circumstances related to its nature, its complexity or the legal and financial structure or due to the risks involved”. In this case, the complexity of aeronautical transport was highlighted. However, for the public speaker of the Council of State, the reasoning of the judge of Bastia, who refuted this thesis, fully applies. The justification for complexity cannot, according to the public speaker, apply to the medical evacuation market.
For the defense of hospitals this analysis is incomprehensible. “The core business of a hospital is not to determine the technical conditions in which air transport must take place”thus repented the lawyer of the Corsican hospitals.
The State Council he will make his decision within a few weeks. If the rapporteur’s conclusions are confirmed, the procedure for awarding the Evasan public contract will have to be restarted from the beginning. Until then, a change to the Altagna contract will ensure continuity of service to patients.
