• This Monday, SOS Médecins did not provide a home visit or consultation, launching a 24-hour strike.

  • The federation of doctors is calling for a revaluation of home visits, at the heart of their activity.

  • An act deemed too little remunerated, which generates a loss of attractiveness and endangers the model of SOS Médecins, explains to 20 Minutes its president, Dr. Jean-Christophe Masseron.

A blank ringing tone, followed by a message inviting you to dial 15 in an emergency. Since Monday 8 am and for a period of twenty-four hours, nobody picks up the phone at SOS Médecins; home visits and consultations are at a standstill. In a statement sent on Sunday, the national federation, which brings together 1,300 general practitioners, announced a "total stop" of its activity, to "alert the French to the planned disappearance of the home visit". At the heart of their demands, the revaluation of this type of visit, blocked for several years at 35 euros.

"For more than fifteen years, the means allocated to home visits have been insufficient with regard to the needs of the French and the aging of the population", estimates SOS Médecins.

“Patients are at the heart of this action.

This strike is the last chance movement to save the home visit, ”explains

 Dr Jean-Christophe Masseron, president of SOS Médecins France

, to 

20 Minutes

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At the heart of your demands, there is the revaluation of the home visit.

What is the situation today ?

The defense of home visits has been a recurring request on our part for many years.

It has been fifteen years since she has been the great forgotten health reform, and has been stuck at 35 euros for a day visit: 25 euros and 10 euros for travel.

Last July, an agreement was signed by the liberal doctors' unions and the Health Insurance, but only for the benefit of treating doctors who travel to their own patients, excluding SOS doctors from any revaluation.

We have the impression that our work is not recognized, that it is even despised.

In practice, the home visit is at the heart of your activity.

What does it represent in your daily life and what specific constraints does it generate?

We receive 6 million calls each year and make 3 million home visits. An SOS doctor spends about two-thirds of his time visiting, but this does not translate into the number of procedures because it is time-consuming, technical and complex: it can easily take 45 minutes to an hour. During this time, a doctor can see three to four patients in consultation at his office. We can see that in terms of organization, this is something that requires a major effort, you have to be convinced and militant to continue this act.

Each time we send a doctor to a patient's bedside, it is because we have considered that it was the best answer to his health problem, either because he is old, fragile or multiple pathological, or because he is 'he presents an urgent medical situation which prevents his movement to a doctor's office.

These visits complement those provided by the attending physicians.

We intervene on the same patients, but in emergency situations, when they present a worsening of their condition which requires an urgent displacement which cannot wait for the attending physician to make himself available, and sometimes also for patients who have not. no more attending physician.

It is our daily life, we cannot postpone these visits.

The travel allowance, of 10 euros for day visits, has therefore not changed for fifteen years ...

For the moment, this is denied to us.

By volume effect, with millions of home visits each year, this represents an envelope that the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) refuses to put on the table.

It is already insufficient for daytime visits, and in the evening and on weekends, it is only 3.50 euros.

We therefore also want a harmonization between day and night.

You denounce today a loss of attractiveness of SOS Médecins.

How does it weigh on a daily basis and what are you waiting for?

We remain convinced of the usefulness of the home visit, but the reality is that it is no longer attractive, and risks disappearing for lack of doctors to carry it out. This lack of attractiveness endangers the very model of SOS Médecins. Our strike is not only for a financial question, it is not a request for revaluation for the simple comfort of the corporation. The risk is that doctors are more attracted to competing structures that only provide consultation. However, this does not provide at all the same type of service as the home visit, which is not replaceable.

SOS sticks to its home visit model, but if we have a leak from our doctors, we will no longer be able to provide it.

Yet our growth potential is infinite because the demand is there.

This is why we are asking for a revaluation, through specific pricing for urgent visits, around 57 euros.

We are expecting a strong signal from the ministry and the CNAM.

To date, our requests have been put aside, and we are waiting to be reassured about the public will to maintain an act which, today, is in the process of disappearing.

Health

SOS Médecins inactive for 24 hours to denounce "the planned disappearance of the home visit"

Bordeaux

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Requisitions across the country

SOS Médecins indicated this Monday at the end of the afternoon that "100% of its structures" followed "the total cessation of activity", even if several were requisitioned for the night guards, in particular in Toulouse, La Rochelle, Dijon, Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, Bordeaux, Pau or Bayonne, among others.

"SOS Médecins will obey all requisitions", assures the federation.

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