Telemedicine is taking root and, with it, the regulation of the sector | EUROtoday

It’s a typical mishap: feeling feverish one morning and needing to see a health care provider rapidly. In only a few clicks, an appointment is made on a teleconsultation web site. An expert seems on a display screen ten minutes later. A prescription and care sheet are despatched by e-mail after a brief interrogation. Simple and fast, the components is shocking. How can we entry a health care provider so rapidly, when it’s typically so troublesome to get an examination near residence?

“Because doctors are more and more on these platforms and less and less in offices! », replies Doctor Agnès Giannotti, president of the union of general practitioners MG France, who observes with suspicion these almost immediate connections via video. They make certain liberal doctors fear an “Uberization” of well being, related to all types of mercantile abuses.

The subscription provided by the personal Ramsay group – 11.90 euros monthly to have the ability to “teleconsult” on demand outdoors of any coordinated care pathway – additionally brought on controversy, in June 2023, to the purpose of mobilizing a mission flash on the topic within the National Assembly.

To regulate the observe, the general public authorities have put in place safeguards: in 2024, solely platforms which respect exact specs will be capable to proceed to invoice medical health insurance for care, and the prescribed stops will likely be restricted to a few days. The proliferation of those affords, favored by the problem of entry to care in lots of French areas, nonetheless raises questions in regards to the place that teleconsultation will finally occupy, and in accordance with which mannequin, within the medical panorama.

Reimbursed since 2018, teleconsultation, initially marginal, took off with the Covid-19 pandemic. So that the French proceed to obtain therapy regardless of confinement, Health Insurance has coated 100% distant consultations all through the well being disaster. Their quantity thus elevated from round 80,000 in 2019 to almost 18 million in 2020, together with 4.5 million for the month of April 2020 alone. It has fallen since then, and stays pretty secure round 1 to 1.2 million month-to-month appointments reimbursed, which represents roughly 4% of all medical consultations. Most appointments are carried out by basic practitioners and the sufferers involved stay predominantly younger and concrete.

Exceptions

The teleconsultation market was estimated to round 100 million euros in 2022 by the analysis agency Xerfi, a determine which takes under consideration tools gross sales, and which may attain 130 million euros in 2025.

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