French hospital waiting times on the rise

Patients spent on average 55 minutes longer waiting in hospital casualty departments in 2023 compared with 10 years previously, according to a recent report.

Statistics from the Direction de la recherche, des études, de l’évaluation et des statistiques (Drees), published this summer, showed that half of people who turned to the casualty departments for a simple consultation were dealt with within 1h35, 20 minutes longer than in 2013.

Such cases accounted for 18% of patients seen in casualty.

Half saw stays exceed 6h30

When it came to the 29% who required technical treatment such as X-rays, blood tests or a check-up with a specialist, but who were then able to walk out, half were treated in 3h55 – an increase of 1h15.

For more serious cases who needed further examination or monitoring in short-stay observation units, the median time in emergency departments was 17h30 – up 2h40 over the decade.

Half of patients hospitalised in another department after leaving emergency care (one in six patients) saw their stays exceed 6h30 (+1h45 compared with 2013).

Casualty departments

French casualty departments work on a strict triage (tri) system, not first come, first served.

In 2023, on an average day in emergency departments, half of registered patients waited less than 8 minutes before triage, but one in 10 waited more than 30 minutes.

Between triage and the start of medical care, half of patients waited less than 16 minutes, but one in 10 waited more than 2 hours.

An hourly breakdown showed that the longest wait was at 20:00, while the shortest wait – for just 1.5% of patients – was at 4:00.

By comparison, the UK statistics agency NHS England Digital said that 74.9% of patients spent four hours or less in casualty for the year from March 2025-26, an improvement of 1% on the previous year.

Why wait times are increasing

Reasons given by analysts in French media for the rise in waiting times are uniform: fewer hospital beds, a growing elderly population, staffing shortages and the difficulty of getting appointments with family doctors.

In recent years, the situation has become so bad that some hospitals have shut or limited their casualty departments due to staff shortages.

By contrast in some areas, such as the Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, the urgences moved from the main hospital into its own purpose-built unit in June, at a cost of €27.5million.

The government has reacted to the increased waiting times by encouraging people to call the medical emergency service 15 before going to hospital. Trained staff and clinicians will ask questions to check symptoms before advising what care callers require.

People experiencing chest pains, breathing difficulties, suspected strokes, a loss of consciousness, severe sickness or children with signs of severe distress should still go straight to urgences as quickly as possible.

French hospitals among world's top 250

Despite these difficulties, 15 French hospitals featured among the world's top 250 in Newsweek magazine's 2026 rankings, which assessed more than 2,500 hospitals across 32 countries. The highest-ranked French hospital was Paris's Pitié-Salpêtrière, in 11th place worldwide, followed by the Georges-Pompidou hospital in Paris (32nd) and the Claude-Huriez hospital in Lille (34th).