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Showing results for tags 'France'.
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Content ArticleThe rapid evolution of digital health technologies offers new opportunities for healthcare systems while also increasing pressure on public budgets. Governments and insurers face growing challenges in determining what to fund and at what price. Health technology assessment (HTA) remains a critical tool for informing these decisions, and several OECD countries are exploring ways to adapt their approaches to the fast-changing and diverse landscape of digital medical devices. The absence of a common taxonomy, coupled with the rapid pace of technological advancement, further complicates evaluation, prompting interest in more harmonised HTA approaches. This paper explores how France, Germany, Israel, Korea, Spain, and the United Kingdom are adapting HTA to evaluate certain types of digital medical devices for coverage and pricing decisions. Through desk research and interviews, it describes HTA approaches, focusing on relevant pathways, technology remits, and evaluation methods. Drawing on practical experiences, it highlights key challenges and potential learning opportunities. The findings contribute to ongoing discussions on adapting HTA frameworks to improve the assessment and integration of digital medical devices into healthcare systems.
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News ArticleA 74-year-old surgeon accused of abusing 299 people, most of them children, while they were anaesthetised or recovering from operations has told a French court he did “hideous things” and is prepared to take responsibility for them. Joël Le Scouarnec is accused of raping or sexually abusing the victims, whose average age was 11, during a 30-year career, and detailing the abuse in notebooks. “I’ve done hideous things,” the 74-year-old told a court in Vannes on Monday, the opening day of his trial. He said he was “perfectly aware that these wounds cannot be erased or healed” and he was ready to “take responsibility” for his actions. Almost all the children were unaware of the alleged abuse until police knocked at their doors having discovered their names in the handwritten “black books” found at Le Scouarnec’s home. The abuse is alleged to have taken place between 1989 and 2014, when Le Scouarnec worked at more than a dozen private and public hospitals in Brittany and other parts of western France. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 February 2025
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Content ArticleIn healthcare, the culture of safe care is an essential prerequisite to be taken into account in order to effectively carry out actions to improve patient safety. Published by Haute Autorité de Santé (the French National Authority for Health), this is a new analysis of patient safety culture that assesses almost 30,000 health sector workers. The study showed that almost 30% of healthcare institutions have participated in this measure, which shows that the culture of care safety is beginning to interest the governance of the establishments and professionals. The least developed dimensions of the care safety culture are mainly related to the role of managers and relate to human resources (32%), non-punitive response to error (35%), teamwork between the institution's departments (40%) and management support for the safety of care (45%). These results do not differ from what has been observed in previous regional measurements. *Please note this paper is in French.
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News Article
France's health system under pressure of increasing demands
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
The UK's health system is buckling under the weight of staff shortages and a lack of beds. In France, meanwhile, there are more doctors and many more nurses, yet its healthcare system is still in crisis. President Emmanuel Macron has promised to change the way its hospitals are funded, and to free doctors from time-consuming administration, in a bid to break what he called a "sense of endless crisis" in its health service. A series of eye-catching measures over the past few years - such as signing-up bonuses of €50,000 (£44,000) for GPs in under-served areas, and ending a cap on the number of medical students in France - have failed to plug healthcare gaps. Some hospitals are reporting up to 90% of their staff on "sick leave protest" at the conditions. And France's second-largest health union has called an "unlimited walkout" this week, following a fortnight of strikes by French GPs. Guillaume Garot, a Socialist MP leading a cross-party bill to tackle the problem of medical deserts, said, "Eight million French people live in a medical desert, and six million don't have an attending doctor," he says. "It takes six months, on average, to find an appointment in my department of Mayenne; in Paris it takes two hours." Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 January 2023 -
Content ArticleThis is the final report of the accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 registered F-GZCP operated by Air France flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro - Paris. The investigation was carried out by the BEA, the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authority.
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Content ArticleThe consultancy firm McKinsey & Company explored the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the nursing workforce in a global survey that included nurses from United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, Brazil and France. The survey findings show a consistency around how nurses feel in their roles today, despite the different healthcare systems and delivery networks in each of the six countries. A substantial population of nurses are expressing a desire to leave direct patient care, with between 28% and 38% of nurse respondents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan and France indicating that they were likely to leave their current role in direct patient care in the next year. This article explores in detail some of the reasons why nurses are choosing to leave direct patient care, and highlights approaches that might encourage retention, including positive leadership initiatives.
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Content ArticleThis French study in the Journal of Hospital Infection evaluated the frequency and factors associated with environmental air and surface contamination in rooms of patients with acute Covid-19. It aimed to increase understanding of how the virus is transmitted in hospitals. The authors found that surfaces seemed to be more frequently contaminated with Covid-19 than air or mask samples, and noted that viable virus was rarely found. They suggest that samples from the inside of patients' face masks could be used to identify patients with a higher risk of contamination.
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Content ArticleThe experience feedback committee (EFC) is a tool designed to involve medical teams in patient safety management, through root cause analysis within the team. This study in the Journal of Patient Safety aimed to establish whether patient safety culture, as measured by the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS), differed regarding care provider involvement in EFC activities. The authors found that participation in EFC activities was associated with higher patient safety culture scores, suggesting that root cause analysis in the team’s routine may improve patient safety culture.
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Content ArticleThis study, published in the European Journal of General Practice, explores the type and nature of patient safety incidents in French primary care settings during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its findings suggest that constraints of the first wave of the pandemic contributed towards patient safety incidents during non-Covid-19 care, with the authors suggesting a national primary care emergency response plan to support practitioners could have mitigated many of the non-Covid-19 related patient safety incidents during this period.
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News Article
Breast implant victims to receive compensation
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
More than 2,500 women who were victims of the PIP breast implant scandal should receive compensation, a French appeal court has decided. It also upheld an earlier judgement finding German company TUV Rheinland, which awarded safety certificates for the faulty implants, negligent. The case in Paris involved 540 British women, who said they suffered long-term health effects. The results could have far-reaching implications for other victims. Jan Spivey is one of the women in the case. She was given PIP implants after she had a mastectomy due to breast cancer. She developed sore and aching joints, chest and back pain, fatigue, severe headaches and anxiety. Once removed it was clear her implants had been leaking silicone into her body. She says the implants have had a massive impact on her mental health. "My PIP implants from 20 years ago are still impacting on my life and my health and my wellbeing, even today." Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 May 2021 -
News ArticleA French court has fined one of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical firms €2.7m (£2.3m) after finding it guilty of deception and manslaughter over a pill linked to the deaths of up to 2,000 people. In one of the biggest medical scandals in France, the privately owned laboratory Servier was accused of covering up the potentially fatal side-effects of the widely prescribed drug Mediator. The former executive Jean-Philippe Seta was sentenced to a suspended jail sentence of four years. The French medicines agency, accused of failing to act quickly enough on warnings about the drug, was fined €303,000. The amphetamine derivative was licensed as a diabetes treatment, but was widely prescribed as an appetite suppressant to help people lose weight. Its active chemical substance is known as Benfluorex. As many as 5 million people took the drug between 1976 and November 2009 when it was withdrawn in France, long after it was banned in Spain and Italy. It was never authorised in the UK or US. The French health minister estimated it had caused heart-valve damage killing at least 500 people, but other studies suggest the death toll may be nearer to 2,000. Thousands more have been left with debilitating cardiovascular problems. Servier has paid out millions in compensation. “Despite knowing of the risks incurred for many years, … they [Servier] never took the necessary measures and thus were guilty of deceit,” said the president of the criminal court, Sylvie Daunis. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 March 2021
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Content Article“Sunshine” policy, aimed at making financial ties between health professionals and industry publicly transparent, has gone global. Given that transparency is not the sole means of managing conflict of interest, and is unlikely to be effective on its own, it is important to understand why disclosure has emerged as a predominant public policy solution, and what the effects of this focus on transparency might be. Grundy et al. used Carol Bacchi’s problem-questioning approach to policy analysis to compare the Sunshine policies in three different jurisdictions, the United States, France and Australia. We found that transparency had emerged as a solution to several different problems including misuse of tax dollars, patient safety and public trust. Despite these differences in the origins of disclosure policies, all were underpinned by the questionable assumption that informed consumers could address conflicts of interest. The authors conclude that, while transparency reports have provided an unprecedented opportunity to understand the reach of industry within healthcare, policymakers should build upon these insights and begin to develop policy solutions that address systemic commercial influence.
