Of the 26 EHPADs in Lozère, only four are surplus to requirements. 85% of them are in the red financially. The Departmental Council allocates them 70 million euros, but the structures spend more than 73 million. This is not due to poor management but rather to l’inflation of recent years. The Department must therefore release, on November 26, an exceptional envelope of 1 million euros to deal with the urgency of the situation. “In Lozère, we have either public EHPADs or private non-profit EHPADs, so we do not have establishments that come to make money on the backs of our elders“, recalls Laurent Suau, president of the Department.
The price is also cheaper than average: 1,870 euros per month on average compared to around 2,560 euros in Haute-Garonne, for example. The care of a resident represents 125 euros per day and per person, the resident pays 40%, the rest is financed by the Departmental Council and the State. “There, we are around 4 million euros in cumulative deficit across all the establishments concerned. We need to react.”
What long-term solution?
For Laurent Suau, we must of course find a long-term solution, but there, the Department prepare for the most urgent “it’s a real social issue. I hope that the new government will tackle the problem head on and help the establishments that need it.“
Lozère refuses to generally increase prices. And make residents pay based on their income? “In Lozère, there has always been a desire to be attractive through price, to bring in residents from other departments. This is a very good thing for our economy. But there are departments which do so according to their family quotient, such as in nurseries or canteens..”
For Laurent Suau “the model already exists, we need to develop it in Lozère, but that will not be enough. It will be necessary to go through a law for refinancing, which will surely come largely from the good will of the State.”
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