Doctors threaten to step up action

HEALTH minister Marisol Touraine was today due to meet representatives of doctors’ unions to discuss the ongoing protest against health reform proposals and the decline in the number of practising GPs in France.

GP Front, which includes a number of doctors' unions, has warned that 2015 will be “a year of combat” for GPs and has said that further action - on top of the Christmas walkout and the boycott of cartes vitale - will be organised in the coming weeks.

General practitioners want to see an increase the average fee for a consultation from €23 to €25. Their other grievances include:

• The planned roll-out of le tiers payant a system whereby patients have nothing to pay upfront and doctors must be refunded by local health bodies and by one of several hundred different top-up mutuelles. Unof-CSMY said the change of payment system, “will cost the state nothing but will mean an unavoidable extra time spent on administration, and will put surgeries at risk due to the inevitable payment delays”.

• A proposal that pharmacists could give vaccines. Unof president Luc Duquesnel has previously called this a move towards “low-cost” medicine which was “pulling our profession apart”. Vaccinations should be doctor-prescribed so they can check on any incompatibility with the patient’s conditions and medications, he said.

There are also concerns about the future of GP services in France. Doctors say that the number of general doctors in the country has dropped 10% in recent years, and predict that numbers will continue to fall at the rate of 1,000 a year for the next five years.

Doctors’ representatives say that low pay and massive administrative pressures are putting off young doctors from entering general practice.

MP Gerard Bapt wrote in an open letter in support of the strike: “While GPs’ income is significantly lower than those of specialists, their working time is longer.”

Photo: Ludovic Lepeltier