2023-08-12 04:00:24
Brussels plans to remove beds in the private sector for the benefit of the public and the non-commercial.
The Brussels Region has some 15,500 beds in approved rest and care homes, of which 9,500 – or 61% – are operated by commercial operators. In Wallonia, this proportion is 44% and in Flanders, where players such as Catholic ASBLs dominate, it is only 19%. The sector also includes public actors such as CPAS. Approvals are crucial for these operators, because social security can only subsidize these beds.
The Brussels landscape of nursing homes is preparing for a real earthquake. In 2024, a regional ordinance will come into force with a view to drastically reducing the predominance of private players in this sector.
The ordinance, initiated by Alain Maron, the Minister (Ecolo) in charge in particular of Social Action and Health, intends to fight against the “commodification of care”illustrated by the scandals around commercial operators such as Orpea, Armonea or more recently Triamant.
The ordinance thus intends to reduce the share of commercial rest homes to half (at most) of the Brussels market. To do this, from 2024, Brussels will withdraw each year from all nursing homes the approval of half the number of unoccupied beds – without compensation – except for a tolerance margin of 5%.
The private sector describes this reform as “pure and simple expropriation”. The Belgian healthcare real estate giants listed on the stock exchange, Aedifica, Cofinimmo and Care Property Invest, therefore decided at the end of July to challenge the ordinance before the Constitutional Court, as did the operator Care-Ion and the sectoral federation Femarbel .
According to the calculations of the sectoral federation Femarbel, around 30% of the sector will “collapse”.
Brussels faces an oversupply of beds in nursing homes: some 3,500 beds are unoccupied. It’s even more true in the private sectorwith an occupancy rate of around 70%. Empty beds cost the public authorities nothing, but constitute the future capital of commercial actors, many of whom are still in the red today, but who speculate on the wave of aging which, after Flanders and Wallonia, will also affect Brussels, demographically younger, from 2030.
Brussels wants to reduce the number of approved beds to 12,000, of which a maximum of half will therefore be commercial. On the side of private actors, some 3,500 beds are threatened with disappearance, or more than a third, in the coming years. According to the calculations of the sectoral federation Femarbel, around 30% of the sector will “collapse”.
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