After seven years of work, the new hospital in Ajaccio, located at the Stiletto, will open its doors. Jean-Luc Pesce, director of the establishment, answers questions from France 3 Corse ViaStella.
On the new site of the Ajaccio hospital center, the corridors and the care services are still empty. Only dozens of carriers are circulating trying, with more or less difficulty, to deposit the right boxes in front of the right doors.
For the past few days, a whole hospital has moved. An operation that should last a month.
Jean-Luc Pesce, director of the Ajaccio hospital center, answers questions from France 3 Corse ViaStella.
- Regarding the move, where are we?
The move began on January 10, with that of the Samu, of regulation. It went very well. Now, we regulate the Samu from the new hospital. We continue the move which will take place over several weeks. Today, it is the administrative, logistical and technical services. This should be spread over the week.
- Are you worried about some confusion about how long this move from the old to the new site will take?
No way. The really serious things for a hospital will start sometime next week. Since we started to move the services, but at the technical level: pharmacy, imaging, laboratory. Then, on January 30 and February 1, the patients of the critical care services will be moved. Important step on January 31 with the opening of emergencies. On this date, the first outpatient will join the hospital, and pregnant women will also be welcomed to the new site on this date.
- We know that strong demographic growth is affecting greater Ajaccio, will this new hospital be adapted to the increase in the population?
So far, we think so. Of course, a hospital is made to evolve, but to date, the establishment will gain a few medical beds, will also find alternatives to traditional hospitalization. We are doubling our ambulatory service, we are creating a medical day hospital.
Because today, the patient demands care, emergency care, but also lighter means of care. And today certain pathologies can be treated on an outpatient basis with admission in the morning and discharge in the evening. We have modernized our walls, we also need to modernize our practices.
- The corollary problem is the lack of personnel…
We would have preferred to move in a period when there was no problem, as has been the case for a few years, to find caregivers, in particular nurses and caregivers. Today, it’s a tighter market, even which is even in short supply throughout the territory for various reasons. We would have liked to have had a greater number of personnel to carry out this move.
If we open with the same number of beds as we have in the old establishment, we have a number of new projects that were planned to be integrated into the new hospital which will ask some time before it can be set up. For example, we had planned a day hospital with eight places, initially it will be open with half as many places.
- The other aspect is road access to the hospital, as well as parking, can we make a point?
Regarding parking, we are significantly increasing our parking capacity, both for visitors and for staff. We will have more than 900 places marked out on the ground, where we had a little more than half of them on the old hospital.
On access, there have already been works on the southern part of the Rocade. We doubled the tracks, it was also in anticipation of the arrival of the hospital. On the rest, I know that projects are underway. I would simply like to remind you that today to access the old hospital in the city center, especially during school opening and exit times, it was not easy to access the hospital. Today, even if we would like to have four lanes everywhere, it seems to me that the accesses are much improved.
- The project was estimated at 130 million euros, there were additional costs…
There was no additional cost on the site as such. We have respected our envelope. The only additional costs that we will generate, but they are also covered, are the resuscitation extension for which we are 100% funded under the France Recovery Plan. The cost of the project is 130 million euros and that has not been exceeded.
- The site has also taken a lot of delay, how can this be explained?
When you start a hospital project, the national average is five years. The first groundbreaking of this hospital was in the first half of 2015. Those who announced, perhaps a little recklessly, 2017 were easily contradicted by the facts. You don’t build a hospital in two years. The minimum date, following the average, was 2020.
We also forget that we have increased the surfaces. We pass of one former hospital of 23,000 square meters. The first project was a 38,000 square meter hospital and as the project progressed, we moved to a 60,000 square meter hospital. So we do not add square meters with impunity without taking a little time.
And then there was the Covid. The Covid is not just a three-month shutdown. It’s a project that comes to an abrupt halt and to resume a project like this, it doesn’t take three weeks. The construction site was slowed down for almost a year. We still had a lot of good reasons to explain this setback.
