During the review of the Health Law, the deputies decided to extend the right to an attending physician to children under 16 years of age. Pediatricians sulk, general practitioners approve.
A new right is opening up for children! The deputies of the National Assembly decided last night to extend the right to an attending physician to children under 16 years of age. Why actor returns to this measure of the Health Bill presented in mid-October in the Council of Ministers.
Medical follow-up from birth to adolescence
Concretely, the attending physician for children will be a pediatrician or a general practitioner. The measure now allows parents to appoint a doctor to treat their child from birth. This will then be followed until the age of 16 by the chosen doctor. The latter will carry out all the consultations planned throughout the growth of the young patient. Currently in France, 71% of medical follow-ups of children aged 0 to 16 are carried out by general practitioners against 15% by a pediatrician.
Satisfied GPs
This project, when it was announced last June, was not unanimous among pediatricians. For the latter, parents must retain the free choice of consulting a pediatrician or a general practitioner, depending on the needs of their child and the availability of local professionals. However, the news was better received by general practitioners. In particular by the MG France union, which supported this project from the start.
Asked last October by Why actor, Claude Leicher, President of MG France confided: “This clarifies the responsibilities, and we also propose that there is no penalty of course when the parents go to see another doctor. »A request which has been satisfied since parents will be able to consult a pediatrician and / or a general practitioner without penalty without going through the attending physician first.
This measure, which should cost 65 million euros to the Health Insurance, is part of a policy of expanding the system of the care coordination pathway put in place in 2004, which requires each insured person to have more than 16 years of appointing an attending physician of their choice before consulting another specialist, to benefit from full reimbursement. Device that the Court of Auditors qualified as “unfinished reform” in a report published in 2013.
.
