Conventional Negotiations between Health Insurance and Pharmacists’ Unions: Upgrading Actions and Financing for Public Health Missions

2023-10-06 10:44:10

Conventional negotiations between Health Insurance and pharmacists’ unions are due to open next November. After accepting new prevention, screening and dispensation missions, they will request an upgrade of their actions.

Faced with the difficulties of access to doctors, the Government is determined to leave more room for maneuver to other health professionals. If it had already undertaken to broaden the vaccination skills of pharmacists, midwives and nurses, the executive intends – through its Social Security financing bill for 2024 – to allow community pharmacists to dispense “without a prescription” certain medications requiring compulsory medical prescription, notably antibiotics, following carrying out a rapid diagnostic orientation test (Trod) for simple cystitis and tonsillitis.

If they accepted these new public health missions“we now have to pay ourselves more”, declared Philippe Besset, the president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France, in an interview with Point. “We carried out on average 600 million acts per year, but in 2022 we will have carried out 60 million more preventive acts. That’s a 10% increase,” adds the pharmacist from Limoux (Aude), who ensures that the expansion of their missions was conditional on “negotiation on the amount of our remuneration”.

Negotiations with Health Insurance are due to open next November. In this context, the president of the FSPF intends to request an additional 1 billion euros to “contribute to better financing of the pharmacy network”. “A pharmacy procedure corresponds to different remunerations added together and costs on average 11 euros. It should increase to 12”, he maintains. An amount which takes into account inflation and the increase in their costs, according to him.

Because if there is no danger in the matter, the pharmacist considers this revaluation essential to compensate for the difficulties of recruiting staff in pharmacies. “We have made a lot of efforts, but we must be able to increase the salaries of our staff – pharmacists and preparers […]. To fulfill these missions, we must be able to recruit, otherwise pharmacies will close. For the moment, there is no pharmaceutical desert, if we do nothing, it might happen. warns Philippe Besset.

The president of the federation, however, denies wanting to take the place of doctors with these new missions. “I want to say to the doctors: if you come back, I’ll cancel everything… We accepted these missions in particular because we no longer find doctors in many places, it’s a reality. Our interest is not was never to take their place, because if there are no more doctors, then there will be no more pharmacists.” he says. And to add: “We seek to work together, in harmony, in the interest of the French, by bringing new ideas to the surface, to improve health care provision in our country.”

[avec Le Point]

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