Sunday January 25, the association SOS doctors called on its practitioners to suspend their activity for 24 hours, before calling to continue the movement until Monday 26 at 8 p.m. In question, “the total absence of proposal on the part of the government if it is not an” epidemic “of all-out requisitions towards our doctors and our structures” explains SOS doctors in a press release.
The association fears the abolition of the permanence of ambulatory care at night, as decided by the regional health agencies (ARS) of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine.
In these two departments, doctors’ on-call at night will simply be eliminated, forcing sick patients to call the doctors directly. Emergency room and be transported by ambulance to hospital. For the secretary general of SOS Médecins Serge Smadja, this situation is considered “aberrant”, unjustified economically and is detrimental to the quality of the care service in France. “SOS Médecins, they are complementary structures of the public service, not adversaries. The care works thanks to this complementarity, ”emphasizes Dr Smadja. Due to the territorial reform as well as the Health bill worn by Marisol Touraine, the doctors of the association fear to see the power of the ARS intensify, to the disadvantage of their night guards.
A massively followed movement
The appeal of the association, which brings together about 1,100 doctors in 63 structures, was massively followed this Sunday, causing significant disruption despite the requisitions.
“100% of the structures are participating in the movement,” said Dr Smadja. “All of them have been requisitioned, but we are not operating normally,” he declared. In Paris, for example, “over the sixty-odd doctors planned, some 25 or 26 ”are working, evenly distributed over the geographical sectors. In other regions, calls pass directly via the 15, which must reach the doctors on their cell phones, resulting in additional waiting times.
The SOS Médecins association, which will be received by the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine on February 2, hopes that its concerns will soon be heard.
Dentists join the strike
After general practitioners and specialists, it is the turn of the National Confederation of Dental Unions (CNSD) to attack the Health Bill. Dentists called for a strike on Thursday January 22, a day during which 2 out of 3 dental offices were closed. Like doctors, they worry about third-party payment generalized, but also the application of the device of the Macron Law concerning the liberal professions, which could lead the patient to choose his prosthetist.
On the other hand, the CNSD protests against being excluded from negotiations between medical professionals and the Minister “while the law will have major impacts on their practice”. Minister Marisol Touraine told AFP that “dentists will be consulted within the framework of the working group”, while specifying that they have already been involved in October when the bill was presented.
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