Faced with a strike in the midst of a triple epidemic, could liberal doctors be requisitioned? The “Doctors of Tomorrow” collective, created at the end of the summer, called liberal doctors to strike between Christmas and New Year, with the support of various unions (UFML, FMF, SML, Young Doctors). The striking doctors are asking for an increase in the consultation fee and an improvement in their working conditions.
But this strike is “particularly untimely in this period of extreme difficulty for the health system,” Health Minister François Braun said on Tuesday, citing an “explosion of cases” of influenza.
“This week is a bit of a week of all the dangers, but the mobilization of personnel is absolutely complete and the system manages to hold on,” he added.
“The minister knew there was a strike movement”
“Two months ago the minister knew that there was a strike movement, he had the possibility of requisitioning, but he did not,” Jean Paul Hamon, general practitioner and honorary president of the Fédération des Médecins, answers today on BFMTV. from France.
The doctor believes that François Braun and the government had “the perfect means to stop this movement and ensure that hospitals are not overwhelmed by the pandemic.”
He laments that they have rather “chosen to let this movement rot, to pit patients against doctors.”
Mandatory requisitions
Article L3131-8 of the Public Health Code effectively provides that “if the influx of patients or victims or the health situation justify it, at the proposal of the general director of the regional health agency, the representative of the State in the department” can “require the service of any health professional, whatever their modality of exercise”.
General practitioners can also be requisitioned as part of “the public service mission of permanence of care”, if the on-call schedule remains incomplete after the departmental council of the College of Physicians has tried to fill it, specifies the Code of Public health. .
For the previous general practitioners’ strike at the beginning of December, ARS Bretagne had claimed to have made requisitions to guarantee the general practitioners’ shift service at night.
A doctor who opposes a requisition is exposed to having to pay a fine of 3750 euros. You can only cancel it in case of force majeure (if you are sick, for example), or if you consider yourself incompetent for the mission entrusted to you (if an ophthalmologist is asked to perform heart surgery, for example), explains the Confederacy. of the French medical unions on their site.
Source: BFM TV
