Are the French abusing hospital emergency services, thus causing them to become congested? According to the Drees, the statistics service attached to the Ministry of Health, almost all of the patients received by emergency physicians are also regularly followed by a city doctor and do not content themselves with calling on emergency physicians in the event of illness.
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According to the note released by the experts, based on figures collected in 2017, nine out of ten patients who go to the emergency room also consulted a general practitioner in the previous year. Half have even had six appointments with a doctor in the past twelve months.
These elements do not allow us to say whether, yes or no, the passage to the emergency room is done by substituting for the use of a general practitioner.
La Drees, the statistics service attached to the Ministry of HealthLa Drees, who, for the sake of precision, studied in parallel the attendance of city medicine by patients who did not go through emergencies, specifies that the latter have on average 27% fewer appointments with a general practitioner than those who went to the hospital. “These elements do not allow us to say whether, yes or no, the passage to the emergency room is done by substituting for recourse to a general practitioner , delay the authors. They add, however, that "they suggest that this substitution effect, if it exists, is not dominant". In 2017, the proportion of patients who came to the emergency room without any recourse to city medicine upstream was thus established at less than 9%. This proportion even drops to 0.3% in the event of repeated visits.
Estimated at 20.7 million in 2017, the number of emergency room visits nevertheless shows an annual increase of 2.5% on average, a rate five times higher than the growth of the population residing in France, notes the Drees.
