Medical analysis laboratories are on a war footing. Reunited as an inter-union organisation, representatives of liberal medical biologists, supported by their counterparts in the public sector, called a national strike this summer, starting on 20 September, to protest against the recent reductions in the prices of tests decided by the health insurance in August.
Starting Friday, private analysis laboratories, which receive an average of 500,000 patients a day, are asked to close their doors for four days. During this period, no tests or samples will be carried out, except for urgent analyses of hospitalized patients. The mobilization of medical biologists promises to be particularly sustained. “All major groups support the movement. In several regions all laboratories will be closed”specifies Jean-Claude Azoulay, president of the National Union of Medical Biologists.
Health professionals are in the crosshairs of new price cuts, which came into effect on 11 September, for certain tests, such as the glycosylated haemoglobin test, commonly used in diagnosing diabetes, whose price has been reduced by almost 53% to 2.25 euros. Biologists are protesting against this deficit of 120 million euros, until the end of 2024, intended to contain the increase in health insurance expenditure in this area.
“The bottleneck is getting worse too fast”
This decision is due to the increase in the number of biological tests prescribed in recent months. The acceleration in requests for tests, greater than expected by the paying agency, threatens to overwhelm the budget allocation of 3.8 billion euros planned for 2024 for the management of these tests, the amount of which had been jointly set with the profession, a year earlier, as part of a three-year agreement. Faced with this observation, the director general of the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Thomas Fatôme, informed biologists in June of the need to adjust prices to adapt to this sharp increase in volumes.
A hard blow for the profession, which feels it was deceived when the agreement was signed in 2023: “At the time, we were assured that this volume increase was expected to be between 2.5% and 2.7%. As a precaution, we had agreed to price reductions at the beginning of 2024. Suddenly, we are told that this is not enough, because the volume increase is finally between 5.5% and 6.5%. We are obviously angry: the bottleneck is getting worse too quickly.”Azoulay regrets.
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