CMAJ
Some hospital administrators expect the move will transform French medicine. “Telemedicine is much more than a new tool, it also represents new working methods, new organizational patterns, new concepts of relationship with the patient, to be implemented in a generalized sense,” Dr. Pascal Staccini, director of the department of medical informatics at the University Hospital in Nice, France, writes in an email.
French doctors will be entitled to bill the government for some medical services provided over the phone at the same rate that they invoice for services provided in their offices or hospitals, under new French legislation aimed at promoting the use of telemedicine and redressing regional inequities in the availability of medical services.
“This mode of exercise [telemedicine] is a response to the medical demography inequalities: where health care resources may be more rare, mainly in isolated areas (islands, rural areas, mountain areas, suburbs, prisons),” a spokesperson from France’s Direction générale de l’offre de soins (DGOS), writes in an email, while insisting on anonymity.
“It may assure the provision of quality care and equal access to healthcare for all citizens. Telemedicine can also respond to the issues of increasing life expectancy, which generates a growing demand for health care from older people, often weakened by the accumulation of chronic diseases and aging effects.”
“Each region will set its priority applications based on identified needs: indeed, the needs for telemedicine are not the same from one region to another; regional health agencies will therefore assess prioritary needs, namely those which are consensual to the health professionals,” the spokesperson added.
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