The activity of public hospitals remained "extremely dynamic" in 2025 according to the French Hospital Federation: the number of hospital stays increased by 4.7%, after already 4.3% in 2024.
In two years between 2023 and 2025, excluding obstetrics (the number of births is decreasing in France, editor's note), the number of stays in medicine and surgery has even "increased by nearly 10%", according to the FHF.
The number of annual stays in public institutions increased from 13.4 million in 2010 to 17 million in 2024, showing that "the public hospital continues to assume an essential part of the response to the health needs of the population," said Zaynab Riet, general delegate of the FHF, at a press conference.
The number of outpatient stays (without overnight stay) is increasing particularly rapidly: +19% in two years, compared to +3.3% for hospitalizations with accommodation.
However, the financial situation of the establishments remains "very worrying": the projected deficit is estimated at 2.5 billion euros in hospitals at the end of 2025, 2.7 billion including nursing homes and other medical-social activities, after 2.9 billion in total in 2024, Ms. Riet indicated.
The general delegate noted "a very slight overall improvement linked in particular to the impact of the increase in activity and the targeted revaluations requested and obtained" last year on certain "underfunded" activities (resuscitation, heavy medicine and surgery, pediatrics, palliative care).
The deterioration in the financial situation observed since 2020 "does not result from internal dysfunctions, but from national decisions that were insufficiently compensated," Ms. Riet continued.
Thus, she recalled, the recent salary increases for healthcare workers, decided in particular during the Ségur de la Santé, have "not been fully compensated" in the hospital budget.
The French Hospital Federation (FHF) estimates the underfunding of recent policy decisions at "1.7 billion euros cumulatively by the end of 2024, excluding inflation." It also estimates the underfunding due to inflation at approximately 1.3 billion euros "for 2024 alone."
She called on public authorities and candidates for the 2027 presidential election to consider "structural reforms" to better organize care in the territory and "a health programming law" to guarantee the proper financing of long-term health needs.
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