In France, as in many other countries in the world, care needs and approaches have considerably changed over the past number of years – ageing of the population, increase in chronic diseases, inequalities in access to care, changing expectations of health professionals, availability of new therapies, digital development, and many more...

 

An in-depth transformation of the health system has therefore proved indispensable and the French government has embarked on a reform program entitled "My Health 2022".

 

In this framework, a law on the organization and the transformation of the health system was adopted in July 2019.

 

This law renews the access to medical, pharmaceutical, dental and maternal education by eliminating the numerous clauses determining access to the second year of undergraduate studies and allowing access to these studies from diversified pathways.

 

The text aims to develop a collective of care, between professionals, and outpatient, medico-social or hospital, and to better structure the offer of care in the territories. It encourages the development of territorial health projects. It creates, on the one hand, the territorial project of health, which will concretize the objective of decompartmentalization between city, hospital and medico-social. It provides, on the other hand, that projects of territorial health professional communities (CPTS) will be subject to the approval of the director-general of the regional health agency to ensure their coordination with other players in the health system. In CPTS, all health professionals will have to work in a network.

 

The hospital trusts, which group together several hospitals of the same department, will have to share their resources in practitioners, their treasuries and even their investments.

 

A data platform is created. It replaces the National Institute of Health Data while expanding its missions. Its role is to collect, organize and make available data from the national health data system.

 

Each user will be able to access their digital space by 1st January 2022 to access their shared medical file and digital tools for secure exchanges with professionals and health facilities.

 

The text adapts the existing legal framework to ensure the deployment of telemedicine and telecare.

 

Furthermore, the Law empowers the Government to take measures by:

• re-certification of doctors' skills, in order to maintain a high level of skills throughout their professional career;
• aiming to redefine the missions and governance procedures of local hospitals. This measure makes it possible to achieve the objective of labelling the first local hospitals as of 2020, whose activity will focus on general medicine, geriatrics and rehabilitation;
• modernizing the authorization system for health care activities and heavy equipment;
• the creation of a single status as a hospital practitioner, associated with the abolition of the competition;
• encouraging the development of e-prescription.

 

My Health 2022 also includes agreements between health insurers and health professionals to improve the care of patients in the city and create medical assistants who will free time doctors to accommodate more patients.

 

To find out more about this act, and to download the French National Health Strategy 2018 – 2022, please visit https://www.gouvernement.fr/en/health-system-transformation-strategy