The price of a consultation with a general practitioner will increase to 30 euros in December, according to a draft agreement finalized on Friday by Health Insurance and the unions of private doctors. This draft agreement, which also provides for increases in the various consultations of specialists and collective commitments for access to care, must now be ratified by a sufficiently representative group of unions to enter into force.
Internal union consultations will take place next week, with the hope of sealing the deal in the last week of May. Doctor Franck Devulder, president of the CSMF union of specialists and general practitioners, was in favor of ratification by his organization. “Does this convention, which is a compromise, bring a plus? I think so,” he said. “And does it bring additional constraints” for doctors? “I think not,” he summarized.
Shared objectives for the first time
“Almost all the elements are on the table”, but “one is still missing”, judged for his part Doctor Jean-Christophe Nogrette, one of the leaders of the powerful MG France union, an organization sufficiently representative to validate its only the new agreement, on the general practitioner side. This last missing element for MG France concerns the consultant’s one-off opinion, a specialist consultation requested by the general practitioner for advice, which should be increased to 60 euros in December in the draft agreement.
General practitioners want to ensure that this consultation cannot be used by specialists to refer patients to each other, bypassing the attending physician. According to several unions and the National Health Insurance Fund, this conflict should be resolved without too much difficulty over the weekend, by a final modification of the wording of the draft agreement by the Cnam.
Generally speaking, the various revaluations contained in the project ultimately represent 1.6 billion euros in additional expenditure for Health Insurance, and 1.9 billion euros in additional expenditure including expenditure complementary health insurance, indicated the general director of Cnam, Thomas Fatôme. The draft agreement also includes “for the first time” “shared objectives” on access to care (increase in the average patient base of the attending physician for example) or on the control of prescriptions, he welcomed.