“Today, we can no longer maintain the same volume of jobs in our hospitals”

“Today, we can no longer maintain the same volume of jobs in our hospitals”
“Today, we can no longer maintain the same volume of jobs in our hospitals”

“What is happening at Helora is very common in Belgian hospitalsassures Stéphan Mercier, general director of the CHU Helora group, requested by The Free. The latest Maha study (on the state of hospital finances, Editor’s note) showed that 2023 was no better than 2022, with two-thirds of hospitals today below the financial waterline.”

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The difficulties are known: if hospital revenues increase, costs increase even more (energy, food, salaries, cybersecurity and IT, new technologies, etc.). “When we add all that up, we have a cocktail that does not allow us to continue what we were doing before, as we were doing it before.”

A double restructuring

The restructuring plan includes two main components. The first concerns the reorganization of the hospitals of Mons-Constantinople and Mons-Kennedy, 700 meters apart, for which “ocan no longer maintain duplicate functions”decides the director. Services will therefore be merged and located on one side or the other, pending the construction of a new site in Jemappes (municipality of Mons), by 2030.

Many hospitals are being built all over Wallonia and Brussels: “The old sites are reaching the end of their life at the same time”

The second part concerns the other establishments in the group, whose administrative structures do not reach the desired level of efficiency. In other words: they cost too much.

In both cases, jobs are expected to be lost. Perhaps nursing staff in Mons, rather support staff elsewhere.

Adapting employment to financing

“It’s something that is complicated to understand in our sector (which suffers from a shortage of nursing staff, Editor’s note), but today we can no longer maintain the volume of jobs. We will have to reduce itsays Stéphan Mercier. To be able to guarantee this volume of jobs, our financing would have to be guaranteed, which is no longer the case. However, personnel costs represent 70% of our expenses. We are obliged to adapt employment to our financing. This does not mean that the reductions will mainly be made through layoffs, but we cannot exclude that there will be some when we have exhausted the possibilities of internal reclassification.”

According to the general director, the reduction in the volume of jobs envisaged by Helora is not exceptional compared to other hospital groups. What is, he says, is perhaps the speed at which this reduction will take place.

The Helora group must make a financial effort of 30 million euros, comparable to that made by the UCL Namur University Hospital over the last two years. “These figures do not fall from the sky. It is no coincidence that two large hospital complexes must both make an effort of 30 million euros.”

“We will have to have the courage to leave the hospital for activities that have no place there”

Political inertia

For Mr. Mercier, “two sentences sum up industry expectations. “The first: that indexation be applied completely. The majority of our expenses are indexed, but not all. For example, medical fees should have been indexed by 4% on January 1, 2025. For specialist doctors, they will be indexed by 3.34%. It doesn’t seem like much, but for the masses involved, it makes money.”

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We have a cocktail that doesn’t allow us to continue what we were doing before, as we were doing it before.

“The second thing we ask for is predictability, to have a stable trajectory over three, five or ten years to know in what way we are going to be eaten. When you have to discuss with the bankers about hospital construction, whose funding will be spread over 25 years, and your horizon of predictability is one year, there is something that no longer works in the system.”

Reform of the hospital sector and its financing has been on the government’s agenda for years. “Today, the only decision that is taken concerns the budget mass” with which management must deal. “It is time for trade-offs to be made at the political level.”

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