Caught between activity weighed down by Covid and expenses driven by inflation, public hospitals should register more than one billion euros in losses in 2022, the French Hospital Federation (FHF) estimated on Tuesday.
“There is a risk of a rather strong deterioration in the financial situation of the hospitals,” said the head of the FHF’s finance department, Cécile Chevance, during a press conference.
For public establishments as a whole, “our deficit forecast is between 1,000 and 1,300 million euros” for the last year, he added, that is, twice as much as before the Covid-19 health crisis.
scissor effect
A “doubling” linked to the “scissors effect” that hits the sector: on the one hand, expenses that skyrocket (energy prices, food, salary increases), on the other a “fluctuating” activity according to the epidemic waves. and even lower by 2% last year compared to 2019.
The sign of a slow restart, while in three years the accumulated delay reaches at least 3.3 million hospitalizations, mainly in the public.
Even if the “financing guarantee” established in 2020 by the public authorities “played an important role as a buffer”, the losses have been widened according to the FHF, which still hopes to limit the losses by recovering the EUR 100 to EUR 200 million of unused credits. last year.
The situation risks repeating itself in 2023, with an explosion in energy costs of 130% on average for public hospitals and still “difficulties in terms of revenue”, indicated Cécile Chevance.
Source: BFM TV
