The union of the French union for free medicine (UFML) has decided to alert the general public to the number of missed appointments suffered by doctors. As reported The Parisian this Friday, the figures collected by the Regional Union of Ile-de-France Health Professionals show “two appointments not honored on average per day and per doctor, i.e. more than 28 million wasted appointments per year in France.
This would represent the daily working time of 4,000 doctors. Many practitioners blame the democratization of online dating platforms, such as Doctolib. They also point to the shortage of doctors, especially in medical deserts, which pushes patients to seek appointments far from home and not take care to cancel them.
The amended Public Health Code?
The UFML has decided to tackle the problem head-on by distributing posters on this subject in the offices of GPs. In addition, he asks the Public Health Code to be able to charge patients who do not show up for their appointment without warning.
A meeting was organized between the managers of the Doctolib platform, the medical unions and the patient associations in order to seek viable solutions. However, Doctolib refuses the possibility of deregistering repeat offenders, so as not to call into question the universality of care.