May 12 was International Nurses Day and our heartfelt gratitude goes to all the workforce engaged in the fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic, who tirelessly and selflessly put their life on the line. It is thanks to their full devotion that we are able to successfully fight the pandemic.

This month we also have the European Week Against Cancer (#EWAC2021). Organized by the Association of Cancer Leagues in collaboration with its member leagues and partners across Europe, this event takes place every year between 25 and 31 May to unite Europe in the fight against cancer, under the one banner.

This year, this international awareness week, focuses on shaping the implementation of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (#EUCancerPlan) – a core priority of the European Commission in the 2019-2024 legislative term. UEHP has been closely following the EU Cancer Plan and we believe that the private hospital sector is clearly a relevant partner in the fight against Cancer and against the large inequalities in European cancer care.

Our sincere congratulations to Oscar Gaspar, UEHP Vice President, for his engagement in the OPORTO DECLARATION, a fruitful initiative supporting Health in EU27. The participation of so many stakeholders, professional and patient associations reinforces the global strategy of a European Health Union for more health in Europe.

The COVID-19 crisis highlighted the importance of working together and let’s hope it will open our minds to new and efficient collaborative processes.

So that one can assert that the private sector in France is one of the key pillars of the nationwide system providing healthcare to all the French people. This became even more evident during the COVID crisis: while the private sector cured about 20% of the total COVID patients hospitalized (including in ICUs), it also provided equipment and experienced staffing to public hospitals caring for COVID patients, and it is fair to say that without the private sector, France would not have been able to weather the storm.

It is also a heavily regulated sector, and while regulations and quality standards apply to all healthcare providers, public and private, it is fair to say that the private sector is highly efficient and meets all quality standards mandated by the authorities on an equal level with its public counterparts, while being cheaper for payers (state and health insurances). So the value created is higher in the private sector.

Finally, the private healthcare sector in France is the most agile and innovative one, ready to adapt to new and efficient ways of providing care (outpatient care, enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS), digitalization of medical records and of administrative data processing, …)

I first joined the French delegation at UEHP because I was (and am) convinced of the profound usefulness of the constant comparison of “how different people do the same thing”, of getting to know different approaches to the complexity of the task of providing comprehensive medical care to everyone in an efficient and attentive way. Every meeting, every document is a source of learning, of inspiration and a chance to ask myself: could we do things differently, better? I was then fortunate enough to have the possibility to join the Board, and my perspective, a bit selfish at the beginning, evolved towards trying to give a small contribution to a group of people, headed and inspired by Dr Paul Garassus, for whom I have a boundless esteem and admiration, who operate to “put more health into Europe and more Europe into health”, which is, I believe, a noble task for the benefit of all European citizens who, sooner or later, become all patients.

UEHP has accomplished a number of significant initiatives, representing the healthcare private sector at the level of EU institutions and national governments. I am convinced that France, like many other EU countries, needs to “open up” to the rest of Europe with more transnational cooperation projects, freer circulation of patients, adoption of regulations that favor access to quality healthcare and information to all EU citizens. Again, COVID crisis showed that when things get difficult, international cooperation can be a tremendous asset, and can literally save lives. UEHP can be a significant actor in the movement towards this opening up and a help on the path to learn to better cooperate.

During this period, most GP practices and specialized outpatient clinics fell into the hands of the private sector and general hospitals developed dynamically and were able to compete efficiently with public entities. The introduction by the government of the Hospital Network in 2017 put a stop to this growth. The share of public financing in the private hospital sector has stopped growing, but the private sector is trying to adapt.
Nevertheless, private institutions play an important role in the hospital landscape in Poland and in some areas are complementary to public hospitals. Fruitful cooperation between public and private sectors have already often been implemented in practice. Globally, the private sector has been since its creation a catalyst of change in Poland. Maybe its most important contribution has been the implementation of quality standards, which have then also been adopted by the public sector. Moreover, the competition between private and public sectors proved to be useful in terms of improvement of infrastructures, innovation and quality of patient services. Today, we can say that the private sector has driven changes so that the Polish hospital sector is more efficient and safer.
A good example is the increase of outpatient surgery, which has been a visible trend in Western Europe, and that the private healthcare sector also established in Poland. Likewise, private healthcare providers are the first to implement new methods of treatment, new medical devices and new processes, for the benefit, comfort and safety of patients.

I have been an active UEHP member since 2004. With UEHP we know what is going on in the private healthcare sector in Europe, we can share, compare, learn from one another especially on important questions like quality, management, risk, development… UEHP is the voice of the private healthcare sector at European level. We often ask for opinions and support. For those reasons, but especially, because UEHP is an open space, where I can meet peers and pick up news ideas. We are closer to Europe with UEHP.

UEHP can help us understand the legislation at European level and support our rights at national level. Most UEHP member countries face the same difficulties in terms of recognition, fair treatments, equal rights with public hospitals, … UEHP wrote support letters, spoke or sent experts to our conferences, which helped us a lot. In return we try to be active members, invite UEHP to Poland, participate in UEHP events, promote, share data…

Read the 4th edition 2019 of the Private Hospitals Sector in Poland

In particular FUNDALIB conducted two studies on regulatory innovation and tax reforms for the private health care industry in Spain. These studies are part of their campaign Private Health Care Saves Lives. This project was the only European project awarded with a special grant last year in the middle of the pandemic together with other 5 projects from the US and Asia. 

The objective of FUNDALIB was and still is to offer market solutions to the Covid 19 crisis but also to offer legislators, public authorities and industry a road map on structural reforms from a regulatory and fiscal point of view. Their proposals aim at strengthening the private health care industry in Spain, badly hurt by Government intervention, intervention that ultimately as they saw during this past year, damages patients and health care professionals in Spain.

FUNDALIB hopes this campaign will be useful in their efforts to strengthen the private health care industry.

Links to the reports:

• http://bit.ly/sanidadprivada
• http://bit.ly/fiscalidadsanidad

Please also check the video briefing of the campaign as well as their round table with experts.  

I see among healthcare professionals a willingness to reinvent themselves. The Covid-19 epidemic has revealed many points of failure in health systems, but it has also highlighted the strength of those working on the ground. We surveyed 2,250 healthcare professionals from 17 to 27 April 2020: almost 90% of respondents wanted health and medico-social establishments to become exemplary in terms of their management of waste, transport, energy consumption, quality of life at work, etc., and the same number were in favor of making public funding conditional on compliance with eco-responsible indicators. The growing number of health establishments willing to join C2DS is also historic. Professionals want to give meaning back to their work.

Each institution has its own formula and pace, depending on its history, human resources, etc. For example, it will be a matter of preventing and reducing waste and transforming the residual materials of some into raw materials for others, observing a sustainable use of water resources and reducing liquid effluents (pollution of medicinal molecules for example), improve energy efficiency and promote renewable energies, optimize incoming and outgoing transport of people and products, implement a responsible purchasing policy jointly developed with suppliers, or promote the circular economy (jobs that cannot be relocated, waste management, local purchasing, etc.). Finally, we design, renovate and construct a building that saves water and energy resources, uses healthy materials (without endocrine disruptors or nanoparticles) to improve indoor air quality, and limits noise and light pollution and electromagnetic fields.
For example, we work with anesthetists who are gradually eliminating nitrous oxide, an anesthetic gas with a very high impact on the ozone layer, and favoring sevoflurane over desflurane for the same quality of care. There are only solutions and some of them are very simple.

We are rediscovering, thanks to the pandemic, that we live in the same world as animals. 60% of infectious diseases are shared between humans and animals and 75% of emerging diseases have an animal origin. They develop as a result of human intrusion into preserved environments. We have proof that animals can be the source of a deadly pandemic. It would have taken a zoonosis of the magnitude of the one we are currently experiencing. Moreover, the World Organization for the Animal Health (OIE), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are going to create a high-level council of experts on "One Health": veterinarians, doctors and ecologists will have to work together. I hope that we will capitalize on "One Health" to avoid teams working in silos. This is the only way to deal with the problems of a common world. A sustainable development approach for health establishments is now vital, otherwise how can we guarantee good health to people on a sick planet?