After the controversy, the scam. Difficult week for Doctolib, the French giant for making medical appointments. Since last weekend, health professionals and patients have criticized the group for allowing its users to make appointments with naturopaths, some of whom have dangerous practices, close to quackery and sectarian aberrations. Faced with the controversy, the group had indicated on Monday suspending 17 profiles of practitioners.
But this Friday, it’s a fraud case that puts Doctolib back in the spotlight. The Montpellier prosecutor’s office opened an investigation in July for “illegal practice of medicine” against two people, reveals franceinfo. Doctolib acknowledged Thursday evening two cases of fraud of which it was the victim in June and August.
“Our verification procedures have been circumvented by individuals who have activated appointment scheduling while their right to practice was being verified,” the statement reveals. Contacted this Friday, Arthur Thirion, director Doctolib France, assures that “these two cases were similar” and that the company has filed a complaint. However, he refuses to give any indication of the potential number of victims, but the data has been provided to investigators.
A “lunar” teleconsultation
“Especially since it is difficult to know how many people have been affected because these fraudsters were also registered on other platforms”, continues the director. And it was precisely a patient from Hérault who alerted to the danger of these scammers when she was looking for a prescription renewal for her children with attention disorder with hyperactivity.
She starts by making an appointment with someone she logically thinks is a practitioner. Except that nothing happens as usual. The interview takes place on WhatsApp, without a camera because it “does not work”, claims the “doctor”.
He also seems completely lost and unaware of the victim’s children’s troubles. After this “lunar” interview, she explains to our colleagues, she will never receive the prescription she came to pick up but a care sheet which seems suspicious to her.
It is this patient who will, with her attending physician, forward the information to Doctolib. “After being alerted, we had temporarily closed this person’s account,” wants to reassure Arthur Thirion, of Doctolib France. The patient opposed her card and filed a complaint, as did the departmental council of the Hérault order of doctors.
Doctolib modifies its site to avoid new scams
Cases of fraud that led the company to react. “From now on, no appointment can be made on Doctolib before the verification of the right to practice is effective”. Because it is the procedure for registering practitioners that was at the heart of these frauds. This allowed a period of 15 days between registration and the control of the registration number with the order of doctors to ensure the right to practice.
“This device was also a request from practitioners who wanted to be registered before they opened their practice, for example, but also while the directories of the regional health agencies were updated”, concludes the director of France. The updating of the legal directory of practitioners by the competent authorities can sometimes take up to 120 days, specifies the press release which ensures that Doctolib has “now removed this 15-day period”.
Since its creation in 2013, Doctolib recalls that “out of nearly 250,000 practitioners referenced in total, we have to our knowledge been the victim on 4 occasions of individuals who have created false profiles on Doctolib by usurping in particular the identity of health professionals “.