'Fast food medicine': how remote GP consultations have become a lucrative industry in France
Since the Covid-19 crisis, the use by patients of companies who provide telephone and online health consultations with doctors has soared in France. Financial groups are now investing in what has become a fast-growing sector. However, these services are becoming increasingly expensive for the state health insurance system, which has to reimburse the cost of them. Caroline Coq-Chodorge and Manuel Magrez report on the growing role of remote healthcare providers in the country.
AA general practitioner has described how he used to spend hours in front of his computer at home, conducting back-to-back remote medical consultations with patients at a frantic pace. “I was doing as many as nine or ten consultations per hour; it was quite unbelievable,” recalls the family doctor, who nevertheless insists that he never rushed his work. “In 95% of telephone consultations, the conditions treated can be managed with ten standard prescriptions,” explains the GP, who has become highly critical of this model of healthcare provision.
