With the introduction of the generalized third-party payment, will doctors be paid late? To find out, two doctors are launching the Third Party Paying Observatory.
The generalized third-party payment, the vast majority of doctors do not want it. For Jean-Paul Ortiz, president of the main doctors’ union, the CSMF, it is a “dogmatic, costly, unnecessary and technically very complex measure. “Main flaw in the system: the third-party payment extends payment terms, say the unions.
To demonstrate this, doctors from Tourcoing launched the Third Party Paying Observatory on Tuesday, November 4. An online study that wants to shed light on the deadlines for payment of invoices by third party payment. Concretely, Dr Bernard Legrand, based in Tourcoing, invites his colleagues from all over France to submit their monthly third-party payment statements from ameli.fr on a dedicated site, so that the study anonymously analyzes invoices and calculates deadlines.
10 days delay instead of 5
Drs Bernard Legrand and Thomas Rémy had already conducted the survey between January 2009 and December 2013 but only from invoices from their group practice. The objective for these doctors was to study the payment terms in real life and those estimated in the report on the third-party payment for town medicine consultations submitted by IGAS to the Minister in July 2013. And the results were clear: with all the bills combined (electronic treatment sheets, FSE and paper treatment sheets, FSP), the difference is quite simply doubling between the findings of the doctors of Tourcoing and those of the IGAS. The study finds an average payment deadline of 10.7 days, while IGAS announces an average deadline of 5 days. For the FSP only, the study finds an average delay of 58 days, while the IGAS announces an average delay of 15 days. Finally, for FSEs, the study finds an average payment deadline of 6.15 days, while IGAS variably announces a deadline of 4 days, 2 days, or 5 days.
With their Third Party Paying Observatory, the two doctors from Tourcoing ultimately hope that the data compiled will make it possible to calculate the list of funds and their changes over time … “The doctors’ unions will thus be able to rely on this data to put the pressure on bad paying funds, warns Dr. Legrand in a press release.
.
