“It is a myth to think that teleconsultation companies make a lot of money off the backs of doctors”

Starting this year, telemedicine companies are required to obtain approval in terms of coverage by health insurance of teleconsultation procedures. Very good news for Jean-Pascal Pierme, president of Telemedicine Companies (LET). The latter campaign for a real place for teleconsultation in the care pathway and tell us their expectations from the current traditional consultation.

Egora.fr: Telemedicine companies don’t have a good press. Doctors’ unions, orders and health insurances are also wary and suspicious of these companies. How can we restore the image of these companies accused of taking advantage of the health system’s weaknesses?

Jean-Pascal Pierme: This is the path we are taking at the LET level. This year, for example, we negotiated specifications for teleconsultation with the stakeholders you just mentioned. This includes many aspects around good medical practices, good contracts and good ethnic elements. We have to get approval for teleconsultation with more than 200 points approved by Digital Health Agency (ANS). We, as a company, guarantee the organization and quality of what is delivered during teleconsultation in terms of good practices.

Did you need this approval to establish your legitimacy?

Yes absolutely. To make it work, we tinkered with existing legal elements. Many, for example, have used health centers to be able to bill health insurance services. We were obliged to build these centers to be able to pay the doctors and pay the health insurance bill. Obviously, this was not the correct method. Health centers are not designed to do telehealth but to carry out medical projects in a region. In terms of legal armoury, that was all we had. As a result, it was not comprehensible to our activity and it did not allow us to monitor the collaboration with doctors.

We needed this approval which gives us clear conditions and specifications and which allows us to give all guarantees of quality. And if we don’t honor our strict obligations, our authorization to practice telehealth may be revoked. We want this clear position for all telehealth procedures and not just teleconsultations. Companies promoting other types of actions – telemonitoring, telecare or teleregulation – always face the same problem that it is not enough to bring the technology to the market, but to know how to monitor the teams that use it. We need a resilient economic model that allows activities to take place every day and is completely secure.

At LET, we therefore want a clear position of “digital operator”, all activities are joint, for which we have to respect certain specifications and which will allow us to coordinate with actors in the regions as part of the development process. Care. .

How do you plan to establish this cooperation with other health actors in the field?

Based on our situation, we should think about the way with health insurance and all the regulators (order, DGOS, HAS, etc.). A large part of our business is dealing with patients who cannot get to their GP because their doctor is not available. So we want to be able to agree on terms for sharing information around this particular route. which should be reported to the attending physician or nurse in that area. If we can formalize this process, treatment can become more fluid. Today, without protocol, everyone does as he pleases. Professionals in the field do not know what they can expect from teleconsultation players and vice versa, like between a city and a hospital. Over time, a bad environment develops.

In its latest proposals, HAS rightly believes that teleconsultation companies should involve themselves in care pathways…

We completely agree. We have moved away from a somewhat dogmatic position on banning cable cars in commercial spaces to proposals that qualify all of these. It is not the location that matters, but the collaboration within the care team and the continuity between the region and the people caring for the patient through telehealth.

Conventional negotiations, which you are not allowed to attend, are underway. Unions and health insurers seem unanimous in not increasing the cost of telemedicine procedures, as in the office. Aren’t you afraid your doctors will flee to practice in the city?

We will see, only the field will tell us. Above all, I see that doctors today consider price but also the conditions of practice which play a big role. Doctors often want to work two or three days in person and one or two days in telemedicine. They are no longer…