Living conditions in private nursing homes: "There is not enough control," said a former Amiens director
Before moving to Amiens, Jean Arcelin led EHPADS for three years in the south of France.He returns to the controversies that today shake one of the main French groups in the sector.
Managers summoned by the Government, fall on the stock market, inspection of a Paris region establishment: for a week, one of the heavyweights of the care of dependent elderly people has been in the turmoil.For three years, the independent journalist Victor Castanet investigated the Ehpad of the Orpea group.The gravediggers, his book released on Wednesday, points out a management that pushes to ration the care and meals of residents to reduce the operating costs of these private structures billed at a high price.
A former director of EHPAD already denounced, in 2019, the working conditions within another group by publishing his own testimony entitled You will see mom, you will be fine.Today installed in Amiens, Jean Arcelin was for three years at the head of retirement homes in Côte-d'Azur.
Is what described in this survey surprises you?
What is in this book, I talked about it.Differently, because I am not a journalist.I did not investigate as he did with hundreds of testimonies.I lived it, that's all.I slept for six months in the Ehpad, I lived it, and that's why I stopped.[...]]]]
There are things that seem to me a little climbing in a pin and that do not correspond to the reality I have experienced.On the other hand, it is true that there are food budgets which are monitored to the nearest penny.You generally have so many rusks, after the nursing assistance are diapers, rusks, bread.It's resourceful.But I have never seen a resident ask for a rusk and that we refuse him.
The testimonies cited join your own observation: the lack of means in the establishments, despite the price of stays ...
The services are not at all up to what is billed.You cannot charge 3.000 euros per month if you spend 4.35 euros per day to feed a lady who has never eaten this food.[...]]]]
What is absolutely intolerable and which I already quoted in 2019, these are profitability like these - up to the CAC 40, side on the stock market - and that we give this kind of food to residents.I remember: I was refused an animation pancakes which was worth 50 euros because there was no more budget.
The consequence of these budgets, in your opinion, is "institutional abuse" ...
Institutional mistreatment, it is simply the lack of means that makes people are poorly treated.Who makes people are poorly fed.Who makes the elderly not been washed or changed.Me, in the morning when I change, it takes ten seconds to put a sweater.Put a sweater to an elderly dependent person who is 90 years old and who has a neurodegenerative dementia: it will take you three minutes because the members are stiff, because she does not understand why we put a sweater, because'we have to talk to him.
That, you have to live it to understand.You can be the most formidable person in the earth, with the greatest humanity.If I give you an elderly person to take care of it, you will do a great job.I give you five, you will get out of it.Ten, it's going to be your limit.Twelve is the end.Fifteen is chaos.Institutional mistreatment is not linked to people, but to the workload and the lack of means.
The group for which you worked at the time was not Orpea.This situation goes beyond the scale of a single company?
I am convinced.Journalists are attracted to names, powerful groups.But take the list of private commercial nursing homes, you will see channels that arrive in number 12, 13 or 14, which have around twenty or thirty nursing homes that no one knows except perhaps the families of the residents: the system isthe same.Strictly the same.
When your book was released two years ago, controversies were already born regularly on living conditions in the Ehpad.Has his publication had consequences?
I had testimonies by the hundreds, because families hang up and tell you what their father, their mother has suffered.It's hard.But no, there was no species in follow -up.All this goes.There must be a political will. Si une société commerciale n'a pas de limites[...]]]], if there is no rule, it's not going well.Especially when it comes to an elderly person, dependent.There is not enough control.There is not enough quality requirement in return.You have states, the Nordic countries or in Belgium, where there is a regulation of profitability.
Is it up to the government to act when they are private companies?
All EHPADS, private, associative or public, are funded by the State.A private, Orpea or other Ehpad affects approximately 35% of its turnover by state subsidy, ARS or the Departmental Council.The state is completely entitled to demand in return, if it interests it, quality evidence.
