Health professionals and patients criticized the group for allowing its users to make an appointment with naturopaths, some of which have dangerous practices. Faced with the controversy, the group had already declared, Monday, suspending seventeen profiles of practitioners.
Le Monde with AFP
The Doctolib group, French heavy goods vehicle for making medical appointments, at the heart of a controversy because it references naturopaths to dubious practices, will strengthen the procedures for verifying professionals referenced on its site, A -Al announced, Thursday August 25.
Health professionals and patients criticized the group for allowing its users to make an appointment with naturopaths, some of which have dangerous practices, close to charlatanism and sectarian aberrations.
Critics have notably targeted naturopaths claiming to be Thierry Casasnovas and Irène Grosjean, two influential personalities in the environment but with discredited positions in the world of health. The order of doctors asked on Tuesday from Doctolib to strengthen its ethical rules to register on the platform.
clarify the content of the sheets of practitioners
Faced with the controversy, the group had already declared, on Monday, to suspend seventeen profiles of practitioners. He announces Wednesday, in a >, have taken a “first series of measures (…) aimed at strengthening your procedures for verifying and reporting professionals referenced on its site”.
Among them, he affirms that no appointment can “now be carried out before the verification of the right to exercise a health professional is effective”. He will also clarify “the content of the sheets of unregulated practitioners by explicitly mentioning that they are not health professionals”.
For practitioners exercising unregulated well-being activities, which represent 3 % of doctolib practitioners and 0.3 % of the appointments made (including naturopaths), a team will be responsible for checking their identity and their presentation sheet.
A first update of the site’s home page was carried out, by explicitly mentioning that they are not health professionals, assures Doctolib. The group “ensures in particular that it is impossible for a patient to confuse a practitioner exercising an activity in the field of well-being and a health professional”, he specifies.
doctolib strengthens its procedures for verifying professionals referenced on its site 👇 https://t.co/szcmrggsvk
The site also announces the opening of a consultation with its medical and professional committee, Miviludes (the interministerial mission to combat sectarian aberrations), unions of health professionals, health orders, Patient associations and health authorities, “in order to better supervise the referencing of unregulated practitioners” on the platform. That consultation “will give rise to a new series of measures”, promises the site.