Jérôme Marty, general practitioner and president of the French Union for Free Medicine (UFML), estimated on Sunday September 25 on franceinfo that the end of the reimbursement of work stoppages delivered by video by a practitioner other than the treating doctor is “a masterful kick” at “a kind of financialization of care” and to “low-cost medicineIn an interview with the Sunday newspaper, the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal announced that this measure will be part of the Social Security draft budget which will be made public on Monday.
These practices costnearly 100 million euros last year“, he justifies. Teleconsultation has developed in certain regions to fill the absence of doctors in medical deserts. “That shocks me that doctors lend themselves to this game in these commercial structures that should not exist“, explains Jérôme Marty. “We have to stop this!“, but “we have to make our professions more attractive so that people settle“, he underlines.
franceinfo: Do you support the government initiative?
Jerome Marty: It is a masterful kick given to everything that is teleconsultation booths or commercial structures, teleconsultation platforms. We have seen this rise over the past few years. This is closely linked to the problem of medical demography. It’s a kind of black market where we have commercial companies that make a kind of financialization of care, with low-cost medicine, where salaried doctors meet the demand of patients who don’t know them and who go to some cases actually produce work stoppages without knowing the patients. Or patients who chase sick leave by knocking on several doors until they get sick leave.
Are they unscrupulous doctors?
We cannot say that. These are doctors who do not have all the elements on the patient that they have in front of them and who will sometimes give this work stoppage. What is needed is to return to quality medicine, medicine where the patient is known to his doctor and we have the possibility of giving the French people treating doctors everywhere. This is not the case today.
Doesn’t it shock you that we can give a sick leave to a patient we don’t know?
It may shock me in the same way that it shocks me that doctors lend themselves to this game in these commercial structures that should not exist. I weigh my words. They shouldn’t exist, but, unfortunately, they exist because the demographic crisis and the health crisis mean that they have had a field open to them. This field must be closed. That means that we have to increase the number of doctors who settle there.
How long do these consultations last?
According to the latest figures we were able to obtain, these consultations are very short since, on average, they hardly last five to ten minutes. Doctors are salaried, so they are not acting. They are not remunerated by the act they lavish. On the other hand, the structure that sets up the cabin is paid in a way for the acts that are carried out. What’s crazy is that you have booths that are in pharmacies. You have them in large areas. Monoprix had installed some, for example. You have some in mutualist structures. Pretty much everywhere. We have to stop this.
Do we have access today to “low-cost” medicine in pharmacies?
Yes, you have pharmacies that have installed teleconsultation booths. It’s not to solve the medical deserts because often they have doctors who are in the same neighborhood as them. So it’s only a financial problem, an economic contribution to the structure. It is to be denounced. We do it, but on the other hand, we keep in mind that 6 million French people do not have a doctor. So, it obliges the government and it obliges health insurance. We have to make our professions more attractive so that people settle down. There is no other way. Let’s take care of making these professions of care that are liberal doctors more attractive, let’s increase their prices so that they settle and do everything so that every French person can have a doctor. The French are entitled to have quality medicine.