Financial aspect, denunciation, management… The “rabbit tax” on unfulfilled appointments leaves doctors wanting more

Every year, nearly 27 million medical appointments are missed. To reduce this figure, Gabriel Attal announced the introduction of a dissuasive tax on Tuesday January 30.

“When you don’t come, without warning: you pay“, insisted Gabriel Attal on Tuesday January 30, during his general policy speech. The goal is to make patients who do not honor a medical appointment responsible, by making them pay for the consultation via what some have nicknamed the ” rabbit tax.”

The project is welcomed by Agathe Scemama: each week, between one and three patients ultimately do not show up at her office for their appointment. “I find this very rudeannoys Agathe Scemama, member of the MG France union. These are often the new patients. They don’t come, they don’t warn, then they don’t call back. It’s consumption.”

Several hours of consultation lost each week

She is not the only one to suffer from this absenteeism: between 6 and 10% of policyholders do not show up for their medical appointments according to figures from the Academy of Medicine and the Order of Physicians, i.e. 27 millions of missed appointments each year. For healthcare professionals, this represents two hours of consultation lost per week, whatever the discipline.

How can we dissuade patients from canceling their appointment at the last minute? Agathe Scemama asks: “Who will report these unfulfilled appointments? Is it the doctor?“For her, the main problem remains that these appointments canceled at the last minute could instead “benefit someone who really needs it“.

“I don’t like the term shortfall, but symbolically there can be something financial”

Agathe Scemama

at franceinfo

While the Prime Minister has not detailed how he will pay for these “rabbit setter“, financial questions arise among doctors, like Soline Guillaumin, spokesperson for the Doctors for Tomorrow collective: “Will the doctor be able to deduct this missed appointment from a future consultation? Will the fund pay the doctor? Will she keep this tax? Who will it go to and how will it be managed?“.

“The big rabbit ears are there to hide the hollowness behind all these ads”

Conversely, for the MG France union, this “rabbit tax” is a device “completely marginal“, estimated Jean-Christophe Nogrette, general practitioner and deputy secretary general of the organization. “At MG France, we carried out a study among general practitioners very recently.t, he explains. The number of rabbits per general practitioner is estimated at an average of two and a half per week. That’s, if we project that onto all French general practitioners, around 6 million appointments per year, while we carry out 250 million procedures.”

A rabbit tax, in his eyes, would not address the real problem: “The problem is that patients, the French, do not need 250 million procedures, they need 300 million and 50 million are missing because there is a lack of general practitioners.“.For Jean-Christophe Nogrette, “the big rabbit ears are there to actually hide the hollowness behind all these announcements. Focusing on rabbits and the penalization of patients who do not come to their appointments while the problems that the French suffer from are access to care, the difficulty of finding a general practitioner near them for take care of over time, it’s quite ridiculous.“

The senators have already wanted to integrate this “rabbit tax“, when examining the Social Security budget in 2024. They plan to let Social Security deduct a lump sum from the patient’s bank account. Another possibility: deduct the sum of the benefits that the patient is supposed to receive at in the future, to repay part of this tax to the professional concerned. The amount of this possible lump sum is not indicated at the moment, but it could be fixed by decree. Health professionals are therefore awaiting details, but indicate that the subject is not a priority. They would have preferred announcements on better promotion of certain acts, or administrative reductions.