the specialists’ union pleads for a consultation at 60 euros as part of “unscheduled care”

The Avenir Spé union is also campaigning so that specialists can refer patients to each other, without going through the treating doctor.

The first union of specialist doctors, Avenir Spé, proposed on Saturday October 5 the creation of a consultation “new type”billed at 60 euros, usable only within the framework of “unscheduled care”or a request “quick opinion”. The patient could be referred by another specialist, for example a pulmonologist who, faced with shortness of breath, would suspect a heart problem, he explains.

The stated objective of Avenir Spé is to “facilitate” access to care. Currently, excluding emergencies, the median appointment times with the specialist are very long: “more than 30 days for a dermatologist, 40 days for a cardiologist”deplores Avenir Spé, in a “manifest” presented Saturday during its congress in Lille, which lists various proposals to improve access to care.

These difficulties are explained in particular by the current organization of the “care pathway”Who “requires you to go first and always beforehand to the attending physician”while general practitioners are lacking everywhere, judges the union. “Without this step”the patient is “less well reimbursed” and the specialist doctor “lower paid”he regrets, deploring a “hierarchization” doctors who according to him “brake” access to care.

During negotiations in the spring between Health Insurance and doctors’ unions on consultation prices, the idea of ​​a consultation costing 60 euros, slipped into a first version of the draft agreement, almost derailed the discussions. MG France, the first union of general practitioners, had threatened to “do not sign”seeing a short-circuiting of the “pivotal role” of the attending physician. The text had been largely watered down.

Avenir Spé goes further: as part of this new 60-hour consultation, it suggests that the patient can be referred by another health professional (nurse, physiotherapist, midwife), or even by a “referent” person such as a family caregiver, for dependent or vulnerable patients. The specialists would undertake to make an appointment within a short period of time: “four days for unscheduled treatment”, “three-four weeks for specialist advice”. They would provide a report to the attending physician.