After having gone through strong internal storms with in particular the closure of the medical service and the departure of several practitioners, the establishment is turning the page with a new director to prepare “the hospital of tomorrow”.
This is the story of a hospital not quite like the others with a singular philosophy: that of treating everyone. A local medicine, militant, which has not accommodated itself, in recent years, to the more financial logics of our healthcare system. But after having gone through a difficult period and great internal tensions, the Joseph Ducuing hospital is ready to rise from its ashes. With a radical change of governance. Exit the former director, Eric Fallet, who had lost the confidence of his teams and place a new director, Cathy Garcia, determined to take up the challenge of “the hospital of tomorrow”. It is up to her to restore social peace and above all to relaunch a machine of excellence in close collaboration with the association of Friends of Social Medicine (AMS), the legal structure of Joseph Ducuing and its new president Claudine Regourd.
A new roadmap
“We carried out an audit for two years with researchers from the CNRS and we relied on a strategy and organization consulting firm to define our roadmap, ensure our economic recovery and aim for a balanced budget”, emphasizes Cathy. Garcia. The priority is obviously the reconstruction of the internal medicine service of 36 beds, closed last December with the departure of four practitioners. “We will first open 4 to 10 beds to gradually regain our initial capacity at the end of the year, specifies the director. But it’s not about copying and pasting what was done before”. Another concern is the consolidation of the emergency department, an essential link in the Toulouse medical system, which receives 18,000 patients a year, but which has suffered from the pandemic. “Today, we lack three emergency workers to operate 24 hours a day,” recognizes Cathy Garcia. To meet the challenge of its renewal, the Ducuing hospital has great assets on which the new management wants to rely. In particular its maternity service, a flagship of Toulouse obstetrics which will have a sixth delivery room. But also the orthopedic, digestive and gynecological surgery departments, called upon to develop as well as the partnerships with other establishments, whether it is the public, with the CHU, or the private sector and the Rive-Gauche or Ambroise Paré clinics for example. Without forgetting palliative care, a pioneering and recognized service or the methadone centre.
The concern for innovation
“Here, we have always done what others did not want to do, on end of life or tuberculosis for example”, recalls Cédric Chaissac, the new president of the establishment medical committee (CME). A know-how to share. “We want to work with other healthcare centers and look for innovation,” summarizes Claudine Regourd, who insists on Joseph Ducuing’s raison d’être and his atypical functioning. “Our strength is to treat everyone. But our strength is also our weakness. We are a private structure operating as a public service in the contracted and non-profit sector. This leads to budgetary fragility. But this financial precariousness is recognized by the Regional Health Agency in our funding. Whatever happens, we are in sector 1, with no excess fees and we will remain so”. In short, a revolution is underway to perpetuate the future of this historic hospital, which the oldest called “Warsaw”, where the change in governance has already produced its effects. “The dialogue in the services is renewed, calmed down, it’s enormous”, welcomes Marie-Josée Ferro-Collados, the representative of the doctors at the CME. The future belongs to them.
A story in the big story
Created in October 1944 by doctors and units of Spanish combatants from the French Forces of the Interior (FFI), the Warsaw Hospital initially treated Spanish Republican refugees in the Toulouse region. In the context of the Cold War, on September 7, 1950, during a French police operation called “Bolero-Papikra”, Spanish doctors were arrested, expelled and forced to leave their patients hospitalized. Professor Joseph Ducuing, surgeon at the Hôpitaux de Toulouse, and his team then took over and the hospital expanded the population treated, mainly French people. In 1955, the Association of Friends of Social Medicine (AMS) was created. She manages from the hospital in the values of humanism and proximity. Today, Joseph-Ducuing has 600 employees, performs 2,500 deliveries per year, ensures 1,500 stays in conventional surgery and receives 15,000 patients in medicine, surgery and obstetrics.
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