Reshuffle. Frédéric Valletoux, a hospital specialist appointed to Health
This time it’s the right one. Several times cited to become Minister of Health, Frédéric Valletoux joins the vast ministry of Catherine Vautrin to take care of health issues.
Former journalist, local elected official (he was mayor of Fontainebleau until 2022), Horizons deputy for Seine-et-Marne, Frédéric Valletoux leaves the Assembly where he sat since the second Marcon five-year term to become Minister Delegate for Health.
Hospital Defender
This close toÉdouard Philippe is familiar with the issues and issues of the health system. He was at the head of the French Hospital Federation (FHF), from 2011 to 2022. For more than 10 years, he was the spokesperson for the public hospital. With a mantra: the need for resources and in-depth reform.
After Covid, he warned of the departures of caregivers, despite salary increases from Ségur de la Santé. “Ségur allowed an increase in remuneration of 10% net. These measures were appreciated but are not sufficient. The structural problems of the hospital have not been resolved: the attractiveness of the professions, the financing, the fluidity between community medicine and hospital medicine, two systems both in crisis”, we he explained.
“Declaration of war on liberal medicine”
His status as a defender of the hospital has earned him criticism from private doctors, with whom he will have to discuss as part of his new functions. He has long denounced the imbalance between the hospital – which bears the majority of ongoing care – and private medicine which is not constrained by guards. Comments which earned him enmity among liberal doctors, with winds against his bill aiming to “improve access to care through the territorial commitment of professionals”. In front the sling among doctors liberals, the text, adopted at the end of last year, had been softened by the most controversial measures. “The word is strong but amply justified. By appointing Frédéric Valletoux, the President of the Republic chooses to declare war on liberal medicine,” immediately reacted Franck Devulder, the president of the CSMF, the main union of liberal doctors.
He will have to find the words to renew the dialogue with liberal medicine – the conventional negotiations on rates have just resumed this Thursday – without alienating the ambitions he has held for years for the hospital.
