#Industry News
The practice of French physiotherapists
In France, physiotherapists have the possibility to vary their activity by performing different therapeutic acts.
They can carry out contracted acts, non-nomenclature acts, and extra fees acts. Contracted treatments are the most common because they correspond to treatments prescribed by the doctor and which are therefore reimbursed by social security. In France, patients cannot go to a physiotherapist without a prescription. For this reason, these are the most common types of treatment practiced by these health professionals.
Through discussions with physiotherapists, Blueback realised that most of them were not very well informed about the other two categories of acts. So we decided to team up with our consultant physiotherapist Servane, to find out more about these practices.
Last November, Blueback held an event called "Apéro Blueback" on the theme of "Non-nomenclature and extra fees in liberal physiotherapy". With Servane as speaker, a lot of information was revealed during this evening. And we decided to tell you about it. After all, it's always interesting to learn more about other countries' colleagues, isn't it?
The non-nomenclature act
We will start with the non-nomenclature. This act is less practiced because it is not reimbursed by the social security, and it does not require a medical prescription. These acts are performed with the aim of prevention and health improvement. This is the essence of the physiotherapist's profession. Of course, it is imperative that these acts fall within the practitioner's scope of practice.
To give you an example, Servane offers fitness sessions that she was able to create with the Blueback Physio. These sessions are offered as non-nomenclature acts, which the patient can choose to do. A large number of activities practiced by physiotherapists can be proposed as non-nomenclature acts. These can be fitness sessions as explained above, but they can also be pilates or massages.
Extra fee for special requirements
The extra fee for special requirements is different from what we have seen so far. As the name suggests, a health professional may charge more than the standard fee in the case of a particular requirement on the part of a patient. This can be an exceptional circumstance of place, time or in the case of a non-medically justified trip. To give you an example: if a patient requires for some reason that the practitioner travels to his place of work, he may then charge this extra fee. This act is not reimbursed by the health insurance.
Different act, different regulations
The three procedures we have just presented are regulated and are subject to various obligations. These obligations will differ depending on the act performed, which means that they will not be the same if one proposes contracted acts or non-nomenclature acts.
These regulations are not easily communicated, and that's why we decided to organize events to inform physiotherapists about the implementation of these physiotherapy acts.
