The Health Insurance draws this Thursday the balance of the teleconsultations system, launched a year ago. After a shy start, more and more patients are being persuaded.

It was just a year ago. On September 15, 2018, Health Insurance launched its system of "teleconsultations" to facilitate access to care for patients who live far away from their doctor or who are struggling to make an appointment with a specialist. It draws this Thursday the assessment of this first year.

Since last September, 60,000 teleconsultations have been recorded in France. They are reimbursed by Social Security provided that the general practitioner who performs it is the attending physician or the specialist knows the patient. The figure is not spectacular when compared to the 350 million medical appointments made each year, but the momentum is good, they say on the side of health insurance. Indeed, from 2,000 last January the number of remote consultations has jumped to 10,000 per month since this summer.

It is in Île-de-France that these new generation doctors are the most numerous. Two thirds of them are generalists rather young, like their patients who easily handle new technologies. Of the 30,000 people who have used teleconsultation since September 2018, one-third are under 30, and more than half are under 40 years old.

A system not so easy to set up

Stéphane Pinard practices Belle-Île at sea, and is a connected practitioner. He tries to organize for his patients remote consultations with specialists on the continent. But it's not always easy, he says at the microphone of Europe 1: "I would like to set up a screening for skin cancer, but it makes me find a dermatologist who agrees to devote us to time slots and to equip oneself. " And that's not all. "If I have patients coming to the teleconsultation station, someone has to be physically present, train him ..."

To accelerate the movement, the next year, the liberal nurses will be entitled to a financial bonus to assist their patients, often elderly and without a computer, during the remote consultations. Ditto for pharmacists who will install teleconsultation booths in their pharmacy.