12 to 15% of the inhabitants of Indre do not have a general practitioner. To deal with this situation and relieve congestion in the SAMU, the INTERCPTS 36 and the Châteauroux Hospital Center are launching a new experimental device: the Access to Care Service (SAS 36), which will allow you to get an appointment within 48 hours maximum. To do this, you will have to dial 116 117.
Meetings with other doctors in the department
At the end of the line, you will first have a regulation assistant on 15, a “switchboard operator” from the SAMU, who will direct you to the Emergency Department or to an operator, depending on the seriousness of your case. The 116 117 will indicate that you wish to consult a general practitioner.
An operator will then take your contact details and the reason for your call, before referring you to a doctor over the phone, a “regulator“. Juliette Wirth, former medical secretary of CH Châteauroux, is one of the four operators trained for the program:
The doctor can give simple advice, send prescriptions to local pharmacies or decide on a face-to-face consultation appointment.
In this case, you will get an appointment with a doctor “effector“of the department, which participates in the experimentation and will have freed up slots for this. So far, 10 doctors have volunteered to be “regulators“online, and each CPTS should open a window for consultations with untracked patients. The Departmental Council has released an envelope of 45,000 euros to encourage professionals, already overloaded with patients, to participate in this operation.
– Juliette Geay
A service reserved for sick patients without an attending physician
Laurence Philippe is a general practitioner in Châteauroux, secretary of INTERCPTS 36. She participates in the coordination of the project on the liberal side:
As we are not in a life-threatening emergency, we make an appointment either the same day or the next day.
She insists on the fact that the device is only open to people who do not have an attending physician, where whose attending physician is absent and not replaced. 116 117 can be reached 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., every day of the week.
After 8 p.m. and on weekends, the same system as before remains in place. Patients are redirected to center 15 for an appointment at the on-call medical center or to be referred by a regulator.
– Juliette Geay
80% of calls to the SAMU do not relate to an emergency
The objective of 116 117 is to relieve the emergency room, already overloaded by the pandemic, and where patients flock when they no longer have a doctor. Chérif Mansour is medical director of SAMU-CENTER 15, he coordinates the hospital part of SAS 36. “We must have between 150 and 200 calls per 24 hours that do not relate to emergency medicine “, he begins.
The number of calls is increasing in the absence of treating doctors in the territory, with the aging of the population and with the difficulties of rurality that exist in our department.
The experiment is carried out in 22 French departments. It lasts until March 31, 2022 in the Indre. If it is conclusive (i.e. if there is “neither too few nor too many calls“), it will be perpetuated beyond.