The French group of retirement homes and private clinics, whose management methods have been the subject of a recent scandal, has experienced, in recent years, an expanding international expansion.
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Every hour, ORPEA operates an more bed in the world since 2015. The first European group of retirement homes and private clinics has experienced in recent years. Left to reduce the number of caregivers at the bedside of its elderly residents or patients, reveals a study of the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (Cictar), made public Thursday, February 24 by the Health-Social Federations of the CGT and CFDT.
Cictar Expertise The financial and tax circuits of large companies. Based in Australia, the organization is financed by union contributions from several countries including the CGT and the CFDT. The two French power plants, which have long denounce Ortracism of ORPEA towards their members and the deficiencies of care towards residents of the accommodation for the elderly dependent (EHPAD), have sponsored Cictar a survey of its financial structuring.
It is the owner or tenant of the walls of his institutions, ORPEA pulled on their budget financial expenses in the form of rents to finance its real estate investments.
Cictar thus takes the example of Residenz Gruppe, a German company of thirty-six EHPAD bought by Orpea in 2015 via a leasing. According to this mechanism, ORPEA pays rents to the seller to end up becoming owner. Residenz Gruppe pays “nearly 20 million euros per year” according to Cictar in rents to his former owner.
“Less nurses and care auxiliaries”
To build new establishments under the banner of Residenz Gruppe, ORPEA also contracted loans from 40 million euros. “Rents and interest payments amounted to Residenz Gruppe at almost half of the amount of its payroll,” says Cictar. At the same time, “The number of employees of Residenz Gruppe decreased by 10% between 2015 and 2019 while Opea, adds the study, operated two additional retirement homes”. “We have discovered by analyzing the accounts of Residenz Grupe a significant decline in nurses or care auxiliaries,” says Mike Lewis, financial analyst and author of the study.
“The cause-and-effect link between the development of the real estate park and the decline in the quality of the management of the residents of ORPEA is not established,” says Francoise Geng, Vice-President CGT of the Federation European Union of Public Services. But “we have proof that this group devotes more energy and means to value its property than taking care of people”.
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