The Saint-Jean clinic in the national Top 10: “it is a qualitative recognition, with all the specialties”

Lamine Gharbi (à droite) et Laurent Ramon (à gauche) entourent une partie des praticiens qui interviennent au quotidien la clinique Saint-Jean et, au-delà, les autres établissements du groupe.

Interview with Lamine Gharbi and Laurent Ramon, respectively president and CEO of the Montpellier private hospital group Cap Santé, whose flagship, the Saint-Jean clinic, is ranked in the Top 10 of the Le Point ranking.

The Saint-Jean clinic is included in the Top 10 of the national Le Point ranking. Is this the result of an ambition, an investment? ?

Lamine Gharbi: The ranking is based on medical diversity, the completeness of specialties. This means that you have to have all the medical and surgical specialties, sustained activity and a large number of patients. We are here on the notion of attractiveness, namely patients that we treat and who are outside our department. This ranking is also a qualitative recognition, with all the specialties.

When you imagined the clinic, during its initial design, was this an objective, in terms of offer and image ?

L.G: The investment in this clinic is 100 million euros. It was therefore a significant investment for our group. Originally, we obviously did not do this to be in the Le Point ranking. We did it above all to offer the population all the specialties. Performance is the success of the convergence: that of an exceptional building, with 26 operating theaters, 200 patients operated on per day, an emergency department with 120 visits per day, a resuscitation unit, a consultation center, etc. All this gives a significant establishment of more than 35,000 m2, qualitatively, quantitatively. This is what allowed us to enter through the front door in this ranking of Le Point, with specialties for which we are first, like the shoulder, urology.

Today, there is the offer of services and care, but there is also the environment of the establishment.

L.G: We must offer patients a smooth pathway, quality reception, accommodation and, above all, quality care. Our services are designed to provide optimal quality care for our employees, so that they are placed in the best conditions to be able to do their job well.

How are specialty rankings a challenge?

Laurent Ramon: One of the main keys to the “9th France” ranking of the 2024 Le Point Awards is the presence of multispecialties within the clinic. Thus, in 10 years, this site has grown from 11 to 38 disciplines, with the arrival of more than 100 practitioners. We perform all other surgeries and for all ages with quality, multi-disciplinary teams also in medicine and anesthesia who work in symbiosis and in line with sector logic. This generates short stays and now regional attractiveness.

Disciplines that perform in the Point ranking

In the 2024 ranking of Le Point magazine, the Saint-Jean clinic is ranked 18 times in the specialty rankings. It is thus at first place for shoulder surgery, 4th for dental surgery, 6th for arterial surgery, 6th also for pediatric and adolescent testicular surgery, 7th for pediatric dental and oral surgery, 7th for foot surgery, 8th for retinal surgery, 9th for kidney cancer, 10th for strabismus, 12th for maxillofacial surgery, 13th for knee replacement, 14th for prostate adenoma, 16th for ankle surgery, 18th for colon or breast cancer. the intestine, 27th for adult back surgery, 30th for knee ligaments, 31st for hip replacement and 33rd for urinary stones.

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

This is the essential step to have a recognized establishment ?

L.R: Our surgeons and doctors are all trained in the Faculty of Medicine following national curricula. However, they each have specific experience and classification paths, allowing them to differentiate themselves. Then they emulate each other internally, including in terms of innovation: for example, the Saint-Jean-Sud de France clinic is the second private establishment in Occitanie in terms of scientific publications. This is not nothing. This is why we are on the logic of multispecialty expert centers integrating advanced consultations in the territories. This is what we are aiming for above all because this is what the needs of our patients are tending towards, who prefer hyper-specialization, such as shoulder surgery, first in France, arteries, sixth, retina, eighth, stomatology, fourth, but also surgery for urological, digestive and ENT cancers and of course, historically, pediatrics with its gateway: our Pediapole.

How can the performance of Saint-Jean have an impact on all the other establishments in the group? ?

L.G: Saint-Jean is the flagship of our group. It is the most recent. The Ganges clinic will follow this path. This recognition makes our doctors more attractive. There are those who will come and strengthen the teams but also those who will work on other sites. It is a whole, it is a qualitative network of the territory. The practitioners who are in Saint-Jean are part of the large Cap Santé family and some work on our outlying sites such as Ganges, Pézenas or Bédarieux. Saint-Jean is certainly a showcase, but all of our sites are just as qualitative insofar as our certification results, an examination by the High Authority for Health, carried out every four years, are excellent.

When we talk about reducing resources, delisting, does this have a risk of impact on the performance of the establishments? ?

L.G: The news today is telling with the rejection of the PLFSS (social security financing bill, Editor's note), which means that our institutions, but also all institutions in France, will have to work with 2024 budgets. We are precisely measuring the effects of the motion of censure. The PLFSS, which was to establish a national mandate for health insurance spending for 2025; with +9 billion euros for public hospitals, private clinics, and community medicine, this increase in the budget is postponed until we don't know when. We are worried about 2025. Especially since 2024 is a complicated year because the increase in our budgets was around 1%. We will have more and more difficulty investing if we do not obtain an increase in our rates. You should know that these are supervised by the State and that we cannot set the price of the operations ourselves, which is set by health insurance. The innovation that we are bringing is of course architectural. But it is also material. To attract and retain the best practitioners, we need robots, equipment, and a large number of staff. These tensions therefore risk, but this is everyone's lot, having repercussions on our investments. We hope that there will be a corrective PLFSS finance law in January to release these 9 billion. But for now, it's a great uncertainty.

How do you see the future? ?

L.R: The criteria in these rankings, such as that of Le Point, are increasingly precise and close to the needs of our patients and populations. We must therefore draw inspiration from them to be even better tomorrow. To do this, we have, within Saint-Jean, a body, which is the Medical Conference of the Establishment (CME). It is a prospective and inventive cell, which innovates to always allow better care, fast, secure and above all up to date “with scientific data”. All our teams within the clinic and the group are happy and proud of this ranking. But it first brings a collective responsibility so that tomorrow is even better, for the care of the thousands of Patients who trust us each year. Finally, I would also like to remind you that Montpellier is the historic city of health and while we of course welcome our presence in the Top Ten France, thanks to the recognized skills of our teams, we do not forget that we are not alone with other establishments in the region that are ranked and a high-performance university hospital.

I subscribe to read the rest