It’s a common mishap: one morning you feel a fever and have to see a doctor quickly. With just a few clicks, an appointment can be made on a teleconsultation site. Ten minutes later, a professional appears on a screen. A prescription and care sheet will be sent via email after a short interrogation. Simple and quick, the formula is surprising. How can we get to a doctor so quickly when it is sometimes so difficult to get an examination close to where we live?

“Because doctors are more and more on these platforms and less and less in practices!” », replies Doctor Agnès Giannotti, president of the union of general practitioners MG France, who observes these almost immediate connections on video with suspicion. They raise fears among some liberal doctors about the “Uberization” of health, which involves all kinds of economic abuses.

The Ramsay Private Group Subscription – 11.90 euros per month to be able to carry out “teleconsultation” if necessary outside of a coordinated care path – has also done The June 2023 controversy led to a lightning mission being mobilized on the issue in the National Assembly.

To regulate the practice, the authorities have taken safety precautions: In 2024, only platforms that adhere to precise guidelines will be able to bill health insurance for care and the prescribed stops is limited to three days. The proliferation of these offers, encouraged by the difficult access to healthcare in many French regions, nevertheless raises questions about what place and model teleconsultation will ultimately occupy in the medical landscape.

Reimbursement since 2018, Teleconsultation, initially marginal, picked up speed with the Covid-19 pandemic. To ensure that the French can continue to receive treatment despite the lockdown, health insurance has covered 100% of the costs of remote consultations for the duration of the health crisis. Their number thus increased from around 80,000 in 2019 to almost 18 million in 2020, of which 4.5 million in the month of April 2020 alone. Since then it has fallen and remains fairly stable at around 1 to 1.2 million reimbursed monthly appointments, which about 4% corresponds to all medical consultations. Most appointments are attended by general practitioners and the affected patients remain predominantly young and urban.

Exceptions

The teleconsultation market was appreciated According to the market research company

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