Good news at last. Public grants allocated to nursing homes should increase by 12 to 17% to improve the care of elderly residents and put an end to “territorial disparities”, recommends the Court of Auditors in a report published on Monday.
Massive needs
“Depending on the options selected”, these reforms would represent “additional expenditure of between 1.3 and 1.9 billion euros, i.e. an increase of 12 to 17% in the overall amount of allocations”, indicates this study addressed to the commission. of Social Affairs of the Senate. “It is very unusual for the Court to recommend additional expenditure,” observed the president of the institution, Pierre Moscovici, last week during a hearing before this commission. But the needs “are massive and will grow massively, we must not ignore them,” he added.
The shadow of the Orpea scandal
Pierre Moscovici was heard by senators in the context of the scandal affecting the private Ehpad group Orpea, accused in the book The Gravediggers of having set up a “system” to optimize its profits to the detriment of the well-being of the elderly. Public spending on care and assistance for autonomy in nursing homes increased by 30% between 2011 and 2019, but this “was not enough to meet the needs of an increasingly fragile population” , say the authors of the report.