Too many and too expensive. This is what the Court of Auditors concludes about physiotherapists and liberal nurses. Social security expenditure linked to these professions has indeed increased by 5.7% per year since 2000, according to this annual report.
A bad distribution on the territory
This increase in expenditure would be mainly due to a distribution too heterogeneous of these health professionals across France. Some regions, such as the south of France or Brittany, have an overdensity of physiotherapists, which leads to a higher number of sessions per patient than in less well-covered regions.
Better control expenses
At the same time, these two professions show variations in fee overruns very significant, sometimes going from simple to double, depending on the regions of France. Here again, the distribution on the territory comes into play, since the highest overruns are reached in the regions where physiotherapists and nurses are the most numerous. The Court of Auditors recommends more control on the part of Health Insurance concerning excess fees and abuse, particularly for acts 100% supported. This report also recommends better distribution of professionals across the territory, for example by establishing a limit on the number of automatic agreements per department. Finally, another solution mentioned is to reduce the entry quotas in training centers for physiotherapists and nurses.
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