A “rabbit tax”. No, this is not a financial penalty against people who love to put this little mammal on their plates, but against those who do not show up for their medical appointment. Who pose a rabbit to their doctor what. This is an amendment tabled by the senators to the bill of the deputy Renaissance Stéphanie Rist on access to care, currently under consideration in Parliament.
Because every week 6 to 10% of patients do not show up for their medical appointment. Last-minute “super important” receipt, childcare problem or pure and simple forgetfulness: the reasons given are numerous. But the repercussions on the health system are just as important. For several months, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Council of the Order of Physicians have been alerting the public authorities to the consequences of these rabbits. According to them, they reduce the availability of liberal doctors, which would limit access to care for other patients and contribute to increasing the number of people going to the emergency room. So, faced with this phenomenon, doctors are getting organized, as those who responded to our call for testimonials tell us.
Posters in waiting rooms
Some online appointment booking platforms, such as Doctolib, allow healthcare professionals to send a reminder to patients, from seven days before the appointment until the day before. Delphine, a doctor, uses this system to guard against oversights by her patients. She sometimes even goes so far as to send them a text message herself the day before, “especially on Friday for Saturday, the day when there are the most oversights. »
François, a general practitioner who has been living in a semi-rural environment for more than thirty years, uses the strong method. In the waiting room of his office, a poster sets the tone: after two unexplainable breaches, the patient will no longer be received in the office. “I have never been forced to come to this end,” insists the doctor, who lists only one or two appointments not honored or excused per week out of 140 to 150 consultations. “Patients with a loss of autonomy and those on regular business trips are of course not affected,” he reassures.
Patient exclusion
Nearly two thirds of these defections concern new patients, those who consult the health professional for the first time, according to the National Academy of Medicine and the National Council of the Order of Physicians. A trend noted by the professionals interviewed, some of whom have decided to treat the delays of their regular patients differently from those they have never seen before.
François (another) is one of them. If a newcomer does not honor his appointment, he will be automatically blacklisted and will no longer be welcome. And if the doctor knows the patient, he tolerates two oversights. “At each missed appointment, the patient is notified by SMS”, explains the professional. A sort of “you only have one life left” (like in a video game, eh, we hope François doesn’t write that to them in real life). With these rules, he limits his rabbits to one or two per week.
Claim for compensation
Delphine, also a doctor, does not differentiate between new and old patients and applies the same rule to everyone: after several no-shows without reason, she blocks appointments on the site. “I even asked for compensation because it had been at least five times that the person had not come to their appointment. »
For José, another doctor who responded to our call for testimonials, it is not so much his knowledge of the patient that counts as the latter’s excuse. At each appointment not honoured, he has the patient called back by his secretariat. “When the excuse seems plausible to me, I go over it. But if I don’t have an answer or an “I forgot”, there is no second chance. It is the exclusion of my patient base. We are not going to advise you to find your most beautiful mytho the next time you forget your appointment, but rather to warn the doctor beforehand. Because rabbits are still more fun when they run in a field.