Health and Solidarity Ministerial Statistical Office
The health and solidarity ministerial statistical office is the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES).
The DREES is a directorate of the central administration of the health and social Ministries. It works under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour, Health and Solidarity and the Ministry for the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty.
Main missions
The DREES employs its skills in the fields of health, social action and social protection.
It is therefore in charge of:
- designing the statistical apparatus and ensuring that statistics are collected, produced, analysed and disseminated;
- designing information systems and making sure that they are coherent;
- ensuring the governance of health data and defining the rules for their availability for knowledge, study, research and evaluation purposes, alongside the general data administrator;
- contributing to guiding the research policy, to developing its work and promoting the results of that work, in liaison with the Ministry in charge of research;
- carrying out summary work and establishing, in particular, health accounts and social protection accounts;
- specifically ensuring that studies and forecasts are conducted, including international comparisons, and coordinating those that are done by the other ministerial services;
- promoting the evaluation work and participating in designing, validating and implementing assessment methods.
Statistical production
The DREES collects information from administrative files and surveys on all care and reception structures both in the healthcare and social fields. These include both public and private hospitals, establishments that provide accommodation for the elderly, establishments for disabled children and adults or those with social difficulties, and PMIs (mother and child protection centres), and so on.
The DREES conducts surveys on the general population in the areas that it monitors (family policy, policies linked to the ageing population, health policy, anti-exclusion policy), as well as on specific populations such as users of healthcare or social services, the beneficiaries of social rights and welfare benefits.
It establishes health and social protection accounts, in collaboration with INSEE, the Public Finances General-Directorate (DGFiP) and the Tresory Directorate-General (DGT). The DREES is also responsible for the secretariat of the two corresponding accounting commissions.
Studies and forecasting
The DREES runs studies about the health and social situation, the challenges of the healthcare and social protection sector (for example, how the care offering is organised), evaluations of any reforms implemented (sickness insurance, public health policy, solidarity for the autonomy of the elderly and people with disabilities, retirement, combating exclusion, and so on). It also makes international comparisons (state of health, poverty and social inequalities in Europe, the definition and care of those with disabilities and dependencies, and so on).
It regularly draws up demographic forecasts on healthcare professions, on populations losing their autonomy, and on the retired population. It develops micro-simulation models in several domains covered by health and solidarity policies to assess the impact of taxation and social measures taken on the standard of living of different sectors of the population, as well as that of various laws (retirement, ageing, and so on).
These studies are conducted using sources produced by official statistics, as well as by a set of partners who produce administrative, epidemiological or statistical data: National Social Security Funds, Technical Agency for Hospital Information (Atih), Institut for Research and Documentation in Health Economics (Irdes), National Institut for Demographic Studies (Ined), National Institut for Health and Medical Research (Inserm), Santé publique France, Medicines Agency, Regional Health Observatories (ORS). The DREES takes care to ensure that it is possible to share data between all of these partners.
The Research Mission (MiRe) commissions and mobilises research to provide input to the administrations and to generate knowledge on health and social policies. It organises seminars to reflect on these subjects and launches calls for research into healthcare matters (suicide, mental health) and social protection (decentralised social policies).
Dissemination
The DREES shares and publishes the work that it has carried out or coordinated on its Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletwebsite.