At the Vichy hospital, a year of goals and turmoil begins

After the hailstorms, the wait

The Jacques-Lacarin hospital center was not spared. Hailstorms on June 4, 2022 damaged half a dozen vehicles at the facility and several buildings, requiring the installation of protective tarps. The roofs housing the dialysis and pediatric clinics, the administration and Villa Madjean, which houses a child psychiatry unit in the city, near the Valery-Larbaud media library, were hit.The administration building covered after the hailstorms of June 2022.

“Not everything will be covered by insurance,” says the director, Jérôme Trapeaux, who assures us that the establishment has not yet revised its plans. The intervention times are long, because it is necessary to have the materials. We may have had office infiltration, even patient rooms, but there was no discontinuity in care. »

Dear energy

Even here the hospital is not immune. Until now sheltered from energy price increases, the hospital expects to have to absorb an estimated additional cost of €5 to €6 million this year, the increases apply from 1 January 2023. An estimate on an overall budget of approximately €190 million, despite the implementation of an energy saving plan in the plant aimed at controlling consumption. Temperature indications at 19°C prevail, as in the private sector, and “the temperature has been lowered more or less markedly throughout the establishment”.

Live emergencies

The hospital ER had a tough time in December and during the holidays. In question the cumulative effects of seasonal flu, Covid and a particularly limited medical staff. In Vichy, more than half of the first aid posts are vacant. This shortfall is, in part, compensated for by the hiring of foreign-qualified professionals, which the institution hopes to retain in the long term, and by temporary emergency room doctors.

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On the paramedics side, the workforce is more complete but the tension is palpable according to the CGT. “The nurses jingle”, dissolves the union that evokes references to rest, the exhaustion of carers and the lack of hospital beds. A general meeting was held on 5 January in service, and an open letter is being drafted to take stock of management problems, the CGT does not rule out the filing of an indefinite strike notice for emergencies.

Medical-surgical building

For two years, discussions have been underway for the construction of a new medical-surgical building, within the confines of the plant. At the end of 2022, the hospital authorities validated an architectural project which was sent to the Regional Health Agency (ARS). The institution is now awaiting a return from the ARS.

The new building, whose budget is estimated at just under 150 million euros, would make it possible to resume the activities of the current structure (emergency, resuscitation, surgery and medicine) and to develop outpatient activities.

A media library by 2025 in Cusset

The CGT, FO and Unsa trade unions, which have been boycotting the meetings of the plant’s technical committee and the supervisory board for three months, say they are “favorable” to the project while questioning its feasibility. “No timetable is presented,” they underline in a letter to the management, regretting “a vagueness about the number of beds and people that will be needed to operate this building. »

Construction in progress

Vacant since the start of the 2018 school year with the school’s relocation to the Docks de Blois, the former building of the training institute for massage and physiotherapy (IFMK) is scheduled for extensive renovation.In front of the old physiotherapist building.
Repeatedly included in the factory plans and postponed, it finally started at the end of 2022 with the construction of a car park and access roads. Work inside the building started earlier this year, with a view to housing the dialysis service and public health center by 2024. The cost of the project is €4.9 million.

The numbers of the year

First, the drafting of a new medical project by doctors. “The hospital is recruiting doctors, that’s fine,” explains Didier Aguilera, president of the institute’s medical commission (CME). The question is how we work together. The number of doctors at 80% has exploded in recent years. If we are to make sense of patient care, we need to have a common vision and cohesion. And this cohesion should be shared by citizen medicine. ” In the operating room, the CME hopes to see the creation of a seventh room for the installation of a robot that allows the practice of assisted surgery in gynecology, urology… “This is the future of surgery. This robot project has been accepted by the ARS. We must give ourselves the means! »

Text: Estelle Dissay
Photo: Renaud Baldassin