The eye emergency unit at the Quinze-Vingts

Why it is on the list

The Quinze-Vingts is the French national hospital for the eye and a university teaching hospital, and it treats nothing else.¹ Its emergency unit calls itself the first eye emergency centre in France: it received more than 60,000 patients in 2017, keeps a senior doctor on site at all hours, and has surgeons, a retina team, an eye laboratory and MRI and CT imaging on call around the clock.² One of its nine operating rooms is set aside for emergencies, and an emergency operation is done at night as well as by day.¹² When the case is urgent, the wait does not exceed an hour.²

It is the wrong place for anything that is not the eye, and for a new glasses or contact lens prescription, which the unit does not give.² For a fever or a general illness at the hotel, call the SOS Médecins house call; for a sudden loss of sight with signs of a stroke, the unit points patients to a stroke centre.²

How to get it

There is no appointment: go straight to 28, rue de Charenton, near Bastille and Gare de Lyon, at any hour.²³ A nurse at the front desk asks what happened and sets the order in which patients are seen by severity, so someone who arrived later may go first.² An orthoptist in the unit does the tests on the spot; if surgery is needed it happens in the hospital's theatre, day or night, and the emergency secretariat books any follow-up with the right specialist.² For a doubt about whether to come, the unit has an online questionnaire that grades the urgency.²

Visitors without French social security pay the hospital's set tariffs directly: an age-based emergency fee of €30.10 to €51.40, with a supplement of €40.08 between 22:00 and 08:00 and further supplements for imaging.⁴ Travel insurance guarantees are not accepted, even in an emergency: pay the hospital and claim afterwards.⁵ For planned care after the visit, patients from outside the EU write to international.patient@15-20.fr or call +33 1 40 02 10 32, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 14:00 to 16:00.⁵

Discretion

The hospital has no parking inside its grounds; a drop-off point is kept for patients with reduced mobility, and the nearest car parks are Indigo Opéra Bastille at 1 avenue Daumesnil and Indigo Faubourg Saint-Antoine at 82 bis avenue Ledru-Rollin.³ If surgery or a stay is needed, the hospital has its own eye surgery ward, and the emergency secretariat books the follow-up with the right specialist.²