In 2022, 8.8 million sick leaves were prescribed in France; this is 30% more than in 2012, when French doctors had prescribed “only” 6.4 million work stoppages, according to figures from the Ministry of the Economy.
For Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, it is clearly a question of a “derivative“: in summary, some doctors would prescribe sick leave of convenience – with a non-negligible cost for Health Insurance, estimated at nearly 14 million euros.
In order to put an end to this “derivative“, Health Insurance launched a vast control campaign at the beginning of the week. Concretely: warning letters were sent to caregivers suspected of being of “too many prescribers“.
According to Thomas Fatome, the director of health insurance, these represent 2% of French doctors: “they prescribe twice, three times, four times more than the average sick leave per patient“, he explained to our colleagues from France Info.
Unions denounce a “witch hunt”
In total, these “reframings” concern between 15,000 and 20,000 health professionals. “First, we discuss with them and we will ask them to reduce their prescriptions because it is not normal to have such a difference compared to the average of their colleagues“said Thomas Fatome. In a second step, the largest prescribers (about 5,000 doctors would be concerned) may be offered “interviewsintended to help them change their habits.
Unsurprisingly, this control campaign is frowned upon by the profession; doctors’ unions even speak of a “witch hunt“.”They make us look like fraudsters!” they denounce.
Questioned by our colleagues from France Info, the general practitioner Mickael Rochoy affirms it: “doctors don’t stop work for convenience. We will target doctors, but we could also look at companies where there are the most work stoppages in order to work on the cause to reduce the number of work stoppages in France.“
Source : France News
