Minister Yannick Neuder made a first stop at the Montpellier University Hospital. Midi Libre – SYLVIE CAMBON
At a run, the Minister of Health went, this Friday, January 31, from the University Hospital to the Parc clinic, he went to the Saint-Louis clinic in Ganges, and ended the day in Saint-Clément de Rivière, headquarters of the Aurores health cooperation group. The former LR MP for Isère, a cardiologist, hammered home the messages he has been delivering since his arrival at the Ministry of Health, and particularly the need to rethink medical studies.
“To open hospital beds, we need caregivers”: having barely set foot in front of the Montpellier University Hospital, in front of the on-call medical center crossed to reach the post-partum department, the first stop on a marathon day in Hérault, Yannick Neuder delivers the essential message that he has been carrying since his arrival at the Ministry of Health on December 24.
The minister wants to “give caregivers a perspective”. “It's not just money,” the cardiologist, former LR MP for Isère, insisted a few hours later during his visit to the Parc clinic in Castelnau-le-Lez, in a schedule designed to maintain “a public/private balance” that we “really need not to oppose”.
The minister also inaugurated the MRI at the Saint-Louis clinic in Ganges and stopped at the Aurore health cooperation group in Saint-Clément de Rivière.
Breast cancer screening from the age of 40 ?
Yannick Neuder announced that he wanted "that we not question the screening of breast cancer in 50-74 year olds", the age group currently chosen for organized screening in women.
“I would like us to get closer to 45, and even 40, an age at which 5,000 women are screened and cured”, stressed the minister, who also puts on the table the detection strategy, via mammography: “I see that at the European level, the thinking is rather on MRI”.
New reform of medical studies to expand the classes, repatriation of “5000 to 20 000 health students who have gone to train abroad”, “basic work” with graduates from outside the European Union, fourth year internships year of internship far from hospitals, why not in a medical center, for the class of 3700 “junior doctors” in general medicine in November 2026, “because you don't settle where you haven't been” … Yannick Neuder has already been running his emergencies for a month, based on a well-known observation: “We are training the same number of doctors as in 1970, even though there are 15 million more of us, and our relationship to work has changed.”
A topic of discussion with Carole Delga
He said it again and again during his visit to Hérault: “I want to be a health minister who takes care of French women and men, but who also takes care of caregivers.”
“To treat well”, they must be “happy”. Today, “many are leaving care, there is a real quest for meaning”, he notes again.
“I am not unaware of the situation in emergency rooms, here and everywhere else. We need to be able to open more downstream beds. For that, we need doctors. Once I have a budget, I want to train more caregivers. We need to eliminate the numerus apertus”, suggests Yannick Neuder, who wants to “rely on the Regions” : “This is a topic of discussion with Carole Delga, president of Régions de France”.
“Lack of upstream devices, downstream beds, boxes and additional staff, unsuitable premises, care with unacceptable waiting times and unworthy of a university hospital at the forefront of innovation…” the minister is still within the walls of the Montpellier University Hospital when the FO and CGT unions send a joint press release on a “notice of unlimited strike” at the Lapeyronie emergency room, starting February 5.
A unique initiative on AI
For an hour, in front of the director of the Montpellier University Hospital, Anne Ferrer, its president Michaë Delafosse, the representative of doctors Patrice Taourel, the deans of medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, the president of the University of Montpellier Philippe Augé, and many head physicians, Yannick Neuder attended a demonstration of the ambitions of the Montpellier University Hospital in terms of artificial intelligence.
Teaching, prevention, care, research, administrative work… The CHU is testing a new approach to AI, which it wants to set an example for other hospitals. “Our time is running out to have our say on AI, and we want to have our say”, recalled Anne Ferrer, convinced that the Montpellier CHU is “one step ahead”.
And a gigantic database: “We have 60 million documents accumulated over 40 years in our memory, and every day, 6,000 new reports are added to this data”, Anne Ferrer emphasizes.
“I see, through artificial intelligence, how we can ease the burden on caregivers, give them more time to spend with the sick”, the minister congratulated himself, who continued to take notes. Not forgetting that beyond “all that glitters”, its priority remains “the provision of care”.
“We cannot make these reforms in a few months”
A few minutes earlier, Yannick Neuder received the staff representatives, to whom he re-examined the main points of the recruitment plan for caregivers: “We had a three-minute discussion with the minister who spoke to us about attractiveness, training, working conditions and the fight against violence against caregivers, and his assistant repeated the same thing”, summarizes Françoise Gaillard, from the CGT, who recalls that “the union has been fighting for years to have diplomas recognized outside the European Union” : “We weren't expecting anything, we are used to the effects of communication with Macron, we weren't likely to be disappointed, but we are disappointed all the same”, says the unionist.
For Isabelle Laffont, it is the “repatriation” of caregivers trained abroad that is stuck: “I do not agree”.
“We cannot make reforms in a few months”: Yannick Neuder, “fourth Minister of Health” in 2024, knows that his predecessors had “on average, fixed-term contracts of four months”.
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