This network of professionals deplores the stranglehold of financial players in this sector, resulting in a degradation of the services provided to patients
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The growing stranglehold of investment capital companies and industrial operators on medical biology laboratories threaten the social model of the healthcare system, so dear to the French? Worried about the evolution of the sector, the independent biologists network (LBI), which brings together nearly 1,000 medical biologists and has more than 650 laboratories in France, sounds alarm. Denouncing the “danger of excessive health financialization”, according to them, responsible for a degradation of the services provided to patients, its representatives called, Thursday, May 5, the public authorities to react.
“It is our health model of tomorrow that is today at stake,” insists Doctor Dominique Lunte. At the head of the LBI network, Auvergne deplores the consequences of the arrival of financial operators (investment funds, pension funds, etc.) and industrialists in the sector for fifteen years. “Under the pretext of profitability, the services deteriorate: many laboratories, which formerly were open six days a week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., now close at noon or no longer carry out emergency analyzes in the afternoon because The technical platforms are too far from the sampling sites to obtain a result quickly, “points out the medical biologist.
an essential pillar
Longer waiting periods, reception of dehumanized patients, explanation of the results of almost non -existent analyzes, and even, accentuation of medical desertification, certain territories being abandoned by investors due to a density of population population Deemed too low to present satisfactory profitability ratios “… The list of repercussions, attributed by the self -employed, to the massive arrival of financial operators to the capital of medical biology laboratories, and highlighted by an Ipsos survey published Thursday, May 5 , is long. According to this survey, 67 % of French people would fear that laboratory buyouts by large financial groups lead to a reduction in material and human investments.
The phenomenon is not new. In 2016, An information report on the reform of medical biology , written by deputies Jean-Louis Touraine (at the time PS, today LRM) and Arnaud Robinet ( LR), already noted, in detail, the excesses of this tendency to the financialization of the sector. It must be said that the sector is not lacking in attractions. Almost 70 % of medical diagnoses are established thanks to the support of analysis results, making biology laboratories an essential pillar of the health system. And with the aging of the population, care needs are not almost drying up, augurantly augurant prospects for growth. The icing on the cake: the main payer of these medical acts being health insurance, risk taking for investors is all the more limited. The recent example of the COVID crisis, which has seen certain major biology groups combine turnover records thanks to the profits of PCR tests, attests.
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