Patients denounce “obstruction of access to care” by doctors’ unions

Faced with the difficulties in getting treatment, patients become impatient. The main federation of patient organisations, France Assos Santé, accuses doctors’ unions of practicing a “obstructing access to care” by opposing various measures currently under discussion in Parliament or with Medicare.

“While the all-incentive has not and will not meet the needs of the populations in the territories, the unions oppose in principle the idea of ​​regulating the installation of doctors to fight against medical deserts”deplores this grouping of a hundred user associations, in a press release released Thursday, November 17.

“Gravity”

France Assos Santé is offended by the opposition of doctors’ organizations to the idea that nurses in advanced practice may, tomorrow, be authorized to carry out certain prescriptions. “The interest of users requires expanding the supply of care and not restricting it even further”argues the group of patient associations, emphasizing that “11.5% of patients over the age of 17 have no attending physician”.

France Assos Santé urges the unions of practitioners “to take stock of the gravity of the situation”. According to the federation, “the next five years will be the future dark years of access to care if major measures are not taken”.

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According to her, access to care is ” taken hostage “ by the unions of liberal doctors in contractual negotiations, “just started and already left”. Negotiating for a new agreement for the next five years “will resume next week”Health Insurance announced Thursday in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse.

The inaugural session was cut short last week, after the doctors’ unions first demanded two technical measures – on their pensions and on the installation of young specialists – and an overhaul of the agenda for negotiations, to address as much as possible Quickly the sensitive subject of tariffs.

Prevention consultations

The discussions, which are supposed to conclude by the end of February, are framed by the objectives of the government, which wants above all “guarantee access to care in all territories” and “one doctor for all” the French – 6 million insured people have no attending physician, including 600,000 chronically ill people.

The executive has also set several priorities for future investments, such as medical assistants whose number must triple – from less than 4,000 today to 10,000 in 2025 – or new prevention consultations in “key ages of life” (25, 45 and 65 years old).

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Furthermore, the “care access service”which brings together SAMU and liberal doctors, currently in the pilot phase in around twenty departments, must be “widespread from the year 2023”. And the “territorial professional health communities”, kind of local networks of caregivers, will have to mesh the whole territory by the end of 2023.

Despite these imposed figures, the director of Medicare, Thomas Fatôme, affirmed that there will be room for maneuver for “reinforcing the attractiveness of liberal medicine and promoting upgrades”especially for general practitioners, paediatricians and psychiatrists.

The World with AFP

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