Les Agences Régionales de Santé deux ans après : une autonomie de façade

From the outset, reform of regional health agencies in France, has been torn between two conflicting approaches: traditional state planning and the more recent New Public Management. In fact, the “Hôpital Patients Santé Territoires” (Hospital Patients Health Territories) bill juxtaposes rather than supplants these conflicting approaches. Based on a sociological and qualitative survey conducted nationwide and in three regional health agencies, this article highlights the contradictions in which regional health agency management is entangled and how it tries to accommodate them in its everyday professional activity. Officially, and paradoxically, regional agencies are required to be “autonomous” and “innovative” to ensure more “territorialized” health policies, but in fact, they are caught in a meshwork of somewhat arbitrary national regulatory and budgetary controls that are very similar to the traditional French model of administration. In the light of the example of three different schemes of regional/territorial delegation regulations, this article shows how the various stakeholders are nevertheless trying to innovate even if, ultimately, they are faced with a more traditional, centralised healthcare system with decreased participation at the more local levels.