“Two appointments not honored per day and per doctor, i.e. more than 28 million wasted appointments per year in France. Here is the message that the union of theFrench Union for Free Medicine in every doctor’s office across the country. Every day, doctors are waiting patients who have made an appointment, and who will never come, preventing other patients really in need from obtaining a consultation in a sometimes overloaded schedule. “It’s pure selfishness. It’s even robbing him of a chance to be cured“, protests its president, Dr. Jérôme Marty in the columns of the Parisian.
A (too) common phenomenon, accentuated by online appointment booking via platforms such as Doctolib or Keldoc, and which irritates health professionals to the highest degree. “We make an appointment online like we would order a pizza”annoys Dr. Stéphane Pertuet. “This is the deleterious side of online sitesadds cardiologist Laurent Izan. Patients take the first available appointment without knowing the doctor and, when they no longer need it or have found another one, they do not have the correction to cancel it.”
Who are the patients who cancel their appointment?
This phenomenon would be mainly urban and on the part of “young dynamic executives“The elderly are the ones who cancel their appointments the least.”They conscientiously note the date and time.recognizes Dr. Jean-Paul Hamon
Cancellations qualified as “disrespect” by Jérôme Marty, against which some doctors no longer hesitate to take drastic measures. “After three rabbits, they just have to find another doctor!”, adds Jean-Paul Hamon. Especially since at the same time, the emergencies, already saturated, are filling up with more than 22 million annual passages.
Penalties of 1, 2 or 3 symbolic euros
To compensate for the lost hours of 4,000 doctors every day, the UFML is considering the sanction of charging patients for missed appointments. “Until patients are punished, they won’t care.”annoys Dr. Vermeersch, one of the vice-presidents of the Union.
“We want this sanction to be symbolic, 1, 2 or 3 euros“, details Jérôme Marty. The idea is that these income is donated to a fund which would be created in favor of medical deserts, in order to buy equipment and set up medical houses.
Source :
- “This can not go on“: doctors saturate millions of missed appointments, The ParisianSeptember 23, 2022
