six doctors sanctioned for prescribing too many sick days

It is a “campaign intended to intimidate prescribers and limit workers’ rights”, reacted the president of MG France in Tarn, the first union of general practitioners.

It is “administrative violence”, denounced the first union of general practitioners, MG France, Wednesday December 27 on France Bleu Occitanie. Six practitioners were sanctioned by the Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie du Tarn (CPAM), which accuses them of having prescribed too many sick leave in recent months.

Nine Tarn general practitioners were summoned on November 7 before a “penalty commission”. Six of them ultimately received a sanction. The decision was notified to them by registered mail, just before Christmas. For three to five months, depending on the case, they will have to undergo “prior agreement”, specifies France Bleu Occitanie. In other words, these doctors will have to write an additional explanatory note for each work stoppage. Then, a Social Security medical advisor will validate or not their decision.

“It’s unbearable! How is a medical advisor who hasn’t seen a patient for 30 years more competent than me to judge whether this or that person deserves a work stoppage or not? We’re walking on our heads!” reacted on France Bleu Occitanie, Doctor Francis Blanc, one of the six doctors sanctioned. This general practitioner, installed since 1978 in the Cantepau district, in Albi, does not understand this decision by the CPAM. He also ensures that the number of sick leaves he signed remained stable compared to 2018.

Théophile Combes, president of the MG France union in Tarn, launched a petition on Tuesday December 26. “It was not a question of discussing the relevance of the arrest made to this or that patient, but rather of a statistical crime, on the basis of figures adjusted to be supposedly compared to equivalent patients according to a methodology opaque, unverifiable, therefore ‘indisputable'”he laments.

The CPAM does not want to talk about “hunting” for sick leave

In this petition, Théophile Combes explains that the doctors summoned by the CPAM “were able to expose the values ​​which underpin their commitment, their consideration of the patient’s interests above all, the therapeutic usefulness of sick leave, the difficulties in providing treatment and the increasingly long delays in a system health in the process of collapsing, moral suffering in the world of work and in society in general”. The president of the MG France union in Tarn denounces “campaign intended to intimidate prescribers and limit workers’ rights”.

Questioned at the beginning of November on France Bleu Occitanie, after the summons of these general practitioners, the director of the health branch of the CPAM du Tarn refused to talk about a “hunting” sick leave. Maël Stefan also assured that there was no “quotas per doctor”. He explained that some doctors were “atypical compared to colleagues who could practice in comparable situations”. However, he continued, “a certain number of doctors were able to explain this situation, others refused to do so”.

This summer, Bruno Le Maire explained that he wanted to fight against “drifts” linked to the sharp increase in the number of prescribed sick leave: 8.8 million in 2022 compared to 6.4 million in 2012, according to figures communicated by the Minister of the Economy.