Yasmina Kattou, edited by Alexandre Dalifard / Photo credit: CHEDLY BEN IBRAHIM / NURPHOTO / NURPHOTO VIA AFP
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7:15 a.m., June 27, 2023
The Ramsay Santé group, the leading group of private clinics in France, launched a subscription a year ago to have access to a doctor 24/24 and 7/7 through a teleconsultation platform. The goal was to offer an alternative to the inhabitants of medical deserts, but doctors are now denouncing this initiative.
Pay 11.90 euros per month to have access to a doctor 24/24 and 7/7? This is the idea of the Ramsay Santé group, the leading group of private clinics in France, which launched a subscription via a teleconsultation platform. Only limit, a maximum of 20 annual teleconsultations. The group intended to offer an alternative to the inhabitants of medical deserts. But since the launch of this offer a year ago, doctors denounce this initiative today when there is a growing lack of doctors in medical deserts.
Americanization of the healthcare system
Doctor Fabienne Yvon denounces an Americanization of the healthcare system. Only the wealthiest would have access to it. Moreover, according to the national representative of the MG France union, a monthly subscription to have a doctor on the phone will not solve the structural problems. “What we need in the field are general practitioners who take care of patients in a comprehensive way and not all at once and without knowing the patient”, she notes at the microphone of Europe 1.
For Jean-Marcel Mourgues, president of the order of doctors, this platform is in reality only little used by the inhabitants of medical deserts. “I am myself practicing in a medical desert. What we see first is the very high rate in these deserts of the population struck by illectronism, that is to say who is not acculturated to digital. So it is a false argument”, he underlines. The Ramsay Santé group ensures that a third of calls are made outside the opening hours of medical practices.