“It’s an incentive, that’s what we’ve been asking for a year”answers Friday, July 1 on franceinfo doctor Luc Duquesnel, general practitioner in Mayenne and president of the “general practitioners” branch of the Confederation of French Medical Unions (CSMF) after the announcements made by Elisabeth Borne on the move to a hospital center in Pontoise (Val d’Oise), the day after the submission of the proposals for the “flash mission” supposed to provide solutions to caregivers this summer.
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franceinfo: Is this increase in remuneration of 15 euros to accommodate patients who are not the usual ones, a sufficient incentive?
Luc Duquesnel: It’s incentive. This is what we have been asking for for a year. These are patients we don’t know so these are consultations that won’t be done in five minutes. So yes, it is incentive. In any case, it is likely to encourage doctors who will already have a lot of work this summer, to respond positively when center 15 calls them. And then, we’re all going to play the game. We have no choice. With the seventh wave of Covid, we are quite worried about this summer. The goal of general practitioners is to be hand in hand with hospital doctors to try to respond as well as possible and that there is no loss of chance for the French in the management of their problems. health this summer.
What do you think of the proposals made in this “flash mission”?
It’s a very big job that this “flash mission” did in one month. Among these 41 measures, some are important to us. For example, the priority for us was to enable us to save medical time. It corresponds to favoring teleconsultation, it is the routing of patients to places of consultation. In rural areas, there are still a lot of visits while the state of health of patients allows them to move around. Sometimes we make visits, it takes us an hour, whereas if we were in the office we would take care of four patients. Another important point that has been requested for 10 years: the organization of weekends. It’s important for us to know that when you already work 52 or even 57 hours a week, you can consider yourself on weekends on Friday evening at 8 p.m., as long as there is an organization that is put in place. on Saturday mornings to respond to all French care requests.
Will city medicine be able to respond?
I believe that city medicine, like hospitals for that matter, will be faced with the same problem this summer. So of course we are going to respond, but if I take the example of general practitioners: when their colleagues are on vacation, very few are replaced, that is to say that those who will be in their practice will have to take charge of their patient base as well as the patient base of their absent colleagues. And then when the emergencies are closed, it creates an influx to general medicine practices but also to general medicine care.
“Today, when an emergency department is closed, there are three times more patients. In the evening from 8 p.m., at the level of the regulation of center 15, we have three times more calls from patients .”
Luc Duquesnel, general practitioner in Mayenneat franceinfo
What do you think of the announcement concerning retired doctors who will be able to return to service?
It is a large pool of doctors. Today you already have 13,000 retired doctors in “employment-retirement” who continue to work but whose activity is reduced. We saw it last year in the vaccination centres, they played a major role in helping other health professionals. It is an important resource. We, in our medical practices, can no longer find replacements when we go on leave. So knowing that they will be able to come and help us is a plus. However, with this problem: it is already July 1st and therefore their holidays are already planned. For us, this is a measure that must be extended all the time at least for the next 10 years since we are told that the medical demographics of general practitioners will continue to deteriorate until 2035.