Thirteen doctors will be on strike in medical centers usually open 7 days a week, 365 days a year in Concarneau and Ergué-Gabéric*. Although they are usually accessible without an appointment all year round, this will not be the case during the Christmas holidays. The 7/7 Medical Centers in Brittany group led by Morgan Lejeune filed a notice from Sunday December 22, 2024 to January 2, 2025. The cause? “An agreement which requires the regulation of access to care in the evening after 8 p.m., on weekends and public holidays,” reports the general practitioner. What does this mean? “It’s quite nebulous but what is looming is a call via 15 before each visit to the office,” continues Dr Lejeune.
If the agreement between Health Insurance and doctors’ unions, signed on June 4, 2024 at the national level, provides for an increase in the general medicine consultation to the tune of €30 from December 22 (compared to €26.50 currently), what also angers these doctors is “the dereimbursement of certain medical procedures”. Which ones? “We don’t know. Health Insurance maintains the vagueness, insists Morgan Lejeune. No one can tell you.” The general practitioner nevertheless has his own idea. “This dereimbursement concerns any reason for consultation relating to non-emergency in order to limit these consultations. It is clear that abuse is targeted but there is very little of it in our country. Patients know for themselves when they come that their need is vital. They don’t travel to renew treatment.”
Abuse is targeted but there is very little of it among us
In this new agreement, it is noted that doctors will only benefit from existing rates in the evenings, weekends and public holidays during interventions “in an emergency situation, corresponding to an illness or the suspicion of an illness involving the life of the patient or the integrity of his or her body and requiring the rapid mobilization of human and material resources.
A petition launched
For these striking doctors, the discourse from higher authorities is ambivalent. “On the one hand, we want to improve access to patient care and on the other, we are asking to close in the evenings and weekends. How can we fight against medical deserts with these contrary decisions? », asks Morgan Lejeune who, with his colleagues, has just launched a petition against this measure which according to him “risks further congesting the already saturated emergency services”.
Practical
The petition is accessible via this link: https://soutien.permanences7-7.fr
