Worried about the future of the Trois Frontières clinic in Saint-Louis, the doctors and all the employees of the establishment are calling for a rally on Wednesday, November 2. They fight in particular for the maintenance of the activity of the operating room, threatened with disappearance according to them.
After years of financial difficulties, the Trois Frontières clinic in Saint-Louis was placed in receivership last July. The potential buyers will be heard on November 7 at the Mulhouse court. A private group, Avec, applied but only the GHRMSA, the Mulhouse hospital group, seems to be able to win.
According to the staff of the clinic, the takeover project proposed by the GHRMSA would lead to the abolition of the operating room. Unacceptable for the approximately 150 employees of the establishment who launched a petition in mid-October calling on the population for massive support. To date, it has collected more than 6,000 signatures.
In addition, a leaflet (see below), distributed in Saint-Louis, alerts the inhabitants of the sector of the three borders to the risks posed by the Mulhouse takeover project. In addition to the removal of the operating room, and with it the entire technical platform, the leaflet denounces the closure of a certain number of services such as that of endoscopy, the continuous monitoring unit or cardiology. The closure of the various services would be accompanied by a hundred layoffs.
Faced with these threats of closure, doctors say they are worried about the future of the clinic and let it be known. This concern is expressed by the voice of the establishment medical commission (CME) and its president Guy Ventré, gastroenterologist. “At the end of the restructuring proposed by the GHRMSA, there would ultimately remain in Saint-Louis only a so-called comprehensive medicine service. That is to say a service that receives patients but without specialty orientation because there will no longer be any specialist present on site.“
About the operating room, almost new, which disappears, the doctor does not take off: “Uno unfair and irrational decision, the quality of service is recognized by everyone“. The emergencies and the SSR (follow-up care and rehabilitation) of Saint-Louis, already managed by the GHRMSA, should resist the restructuring.
There will be a disappearance of local care offers that Mulhouse, already very saturated, will not be able to manage either in public or in private.
Guy Ventré, president of the establishment’s medical committee
For lack of knowing what will become of them, the doctors of Saint-Louis hesitate to give appointments to their patients. Already, the patient’s journey is becoming very complicated and gives a foretaste of the situation to come for Guy Ventré: “There will be a disappearance of local care offers that Mulhouse, already very saturated, will not be able to manage either in public or in private. In my field for example, in gastroenterology, the Mulhouse hospital called me to tell me that it is no longer worth sending them patients, that they cannot follow up, that they have deadlines too important and advised me to send them either to the Pasteur hospital in Colmar or to Strasbourg“.
The nearest hospitals would be more than 60 kilometers away, an untenable prospect for patients, doctors lament. Especially since Saint-Louis, with a medical under-density, was recently classified as a priority intervention zone (ZIP). “This means that it is where the density of general practitioners is the lowest that we will further accentuate the phenomenon if there is no longer a correspondent at the clinic level.
The inhabitants are called to participate in a rally of support on Wednesday, November 2 at 2:30 p.m., in front of the clinic. “It is a manifestation of both staff, unions, the medical profession, general practitioners in the sector and also politicians. Isabelle Trendel, mayor of Village-Neuf and responsible for the community of health municipalities, will be present as well as many other elected officials from neighboring municipalities. emphasizes Guy Ventré.
Among health professionals, hope now lies in the success of this event. If the population is there, “it can weigh in the balance”.
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