France 's medical system, which is mainly run by the State, has stations and centers housed in different institutions. In addition to the services offered in hospitals, the general practitioners, specialists, pharmacists, and other medical personnel can provide medical services.
In France, people usually contact two types of doctors for their medical needs:
1. General practitioner (le généraliste) is he who gives medical consultation services;
2. A specialist (le spécialiste) is he who is expert in curing a particular disease.
In France, payment of hospital bill is through medical insurances. The amount to be paid depends on the type of doctor you hired. There are three types of agreements with doctors: first type of agreement, second type of agreement and the last is non-agreement
Uninsured patients who sought services from a general practitioner or from a specialist such as drug tests, x-rays, and others will have to pay the bill by themselves.
The first category of agreement is adopted by majority of general practitioners in France. With a percentage of 85%, there are about 51,900 general practitioners who belong to the first category of agreement. This type of agreement, which is in cooperation of the national security, adopts a unified fixed cost of treatment charges from patients. However, under special circumstances, the general practitioners belonging to this type of agreement may raise the cost of not more than 20 euros. Insured patients, however, need not to worry because 70 % shall be reimbursed though the social insurance system. Only the remaining amount after removing the 70% reimbursement shall be paid personally by the patient.
The second type of agreement is called “free consultation fee”. There are about 8,300 doctors belong to the second category of agreement. The advantage here is that, patients may claim for mutual services for the consultation from the social security and the medical insurance. For example, if the doctor charges you for 35 euros, the social security may pay the 13 euros while the remaining 22 euros will be obtained from the medical insurance.
The third category is the non-agreement where about 647 doctors are members. These doctors can freely decide how much they charge for consultation fees and only about a little shall be reimbursed.
In hiring a doctor, it is therefore necessary to understand what type of agreement do they belong so as to know how much you would be charged.
As regard to nursing infants, it is recommended to look for the doctor belonging to the first type. The doctor will attend to infants from 0-24 months with service such as full examination, diagnosis, prescription and daily health record. The fee for such service is no more than 25 euros.
Pediatricians (pédiatre) belonging to the first type, charge fees on age base. Children aging from 2 to 6 years old, the fee costs about 25 to 27 euros while those from 0 to 2 years old, the fee would cost 28 to 30 euros.
Specialists such as psychiatric doctors (psychiatre), the neuro-psychology practitioners (neuropsychiatre), and the neurological doctor (neurologue) usually charge fixed service fee of 40 euros. Patients must consult first his own general practitioner (médecin traitant) and ask for recommendation/endorsement before going to a specialist. This is at your advantage since if specialist do not receive any recommendation from your own doctor, he may raise the service fee.
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