The prefects can requisition doctors if necessary. Doctors cannot derogate from it, except in exceptional cases.
Faced with a strike in the midst of a triple epidemic, could liberal doctors be requisitioned? The collective “Doctors for tomorrow”, created at the end of the summer, called on liberal doctors to go on strike between Christmas and New Year’s Day, with the support of several 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 unwelcome in this period of extreme difficulty for the health system”, said Tuesday the Minister of Health, François Braun, mentioning an “explosion of cases” of influenza.
“This week is a bit of a week of all dangers, but the mobilization of personnel is absolutely complete and the system manages to hold up,” he added.
“The minister knew there was a strike movement”
“It’s been two months since the minister knew that there was a strike movement, he had the possibility of requisitioning, but he did not do it”, answers him today on BFMTV Jean Paul Hamon, general practitioner and honorary president of the Fédération des Médecins de France.
The doctor believes that François Braun and the government had “perfect means to curb this movement and to ensure that hospitals are not overwhelmed by the pandemic”.
He deplores 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 actually provides that “if the influx of patients or victims or the health situation justifies it, on the proposal of the director general of the regional health agency, the representative of the State in the department” can “request the service of any professional of health, whatever its mode of exercise”.
General practitioners can also be requisitioned within the framework of “the public service mission of permanent care”, if the on-call schedule remains incomplete after the departmental council of the College of Physicians has attempted to fill it, specifies the Public Health Code.
For the previous strike of general practitioners at the beginning of December, ARS Bretagne had claimed to have made requisitions to guarantee the duty of general practitioners at night.
A doctor who opposes a requisition exposes himself to having to pay a fine of 3750 euros. He can only derogate from it in the event of force majeure (if he is ill for example), or if he considers himself incompetent for the mission entrusted to him (if an ophthalmologist is asked to perform surgery cardiac for example), explains the Confederation of French Medical Unions on his site.
