For the benefit of the coronavirus, the arretmaladie.fr website comes back with a new offer: free consultations for patients who have passed through areas strongly affected by the epidemic.
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Have you visited China, Singapore, South Korea, Lombardy or even Veneto? arretmaladie.fr offers you to answer a questionnaire to indicate your symptoms. He can then organize a video consultation with you via the WhatsApp messaging application, during the day, to obtain sick leave for a period of 14 days. In other words, the period required for quarantine in the case of the coronavirus.
Offer consultations to prevent coronavirus, a way to improve the image of the start-up? The arretmaladie.fr site was launched in January 2020, on the promise of giving access to sick leave for a maximum of 3 days after a teleconsultation. The concept imported from Germany was however received with a volley of green wood. The Minister of Labor Muriel Pénicaud immediately criticized " people who make money on the backs of citizens and Social Security ". The National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) had in the process filed a complaint against the company, warning: " work stoppages are not consumer products, likely to be distributed at the request of patients. They fall under a medical prescription and must intervene on the initiative of the doctor ” .
" At our launch, we received criticisms that were not necessarily founded, " defends Can Ansey, co-founder of the German start-up who launched arretmaladie.fr. “ We offer these free teleconsultations in the case of the coronavirus because the official system does not work . People don't know what to do when they come back from an area severely affected by the coronavirus . ” According to him, any patient who presents symptoms of coronavirus during the teleconsultation is immediately ordered to call 15, medical emergency number, and then receives follow-up from the doctor.
The path of the authorities is already marked
However, this course of care is far from the procedure provided by the authorities, according to the director of the National Health Insurance Fund (Cnam), Nicolas Revel. Questioned by the daily Le Parisien , he once again attacked arretmaladie.fr, and indicates that "there is no question that sick leaves are delivered to people at risk by liberal doctors. Only doctors from regional health agencies are empowered to prescribe when the employer of an employee returning from a risk area does not want or can not set up teleworking .
Remember that when returning from a risk zone, the patient must turn to a regional health agency (ARS), which is empowered to issue the work stoppage and transmit it to the health insurance and employer. If isolation measures are necessary, a decree published on February 1, 2020 also allows him to benefit from daily allowances for a maximum duration of 20 days, without waiting period. This measure is extended to parents whose children are subject to isolation measures.
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Can Ansey indicates for his part that his company practices the policy of reaching out with the authorities, following the controversy around its launch. According to him, the Council of the College of Physicians, which had also rebelled, simply did not act on proposals for dialogue. A meeting with the Ministry of Labor would be scheduled " soon ".