Four in five doctors who responded to a poll by medical trade publication Artsenkrant support increasing the patient fee for GP consultations, a proposal currently being discussed in budget talks.
The poll of nearly 1,300 Belgian doctors found that 65% favour raising the fee to €5 for patients entitled to increased reimbursement and to €10 for other patients. At present, those patients pay €1 and €4 respectively when consulting a conventioned doctor.
A further 15% want to keep the current system, while 16% support even higher fees. In total, 81% of participating doctors said they wanted a higher fee than the current one, though 4% favour abolishing the patient fee altogether.
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Artsenkrant noted that support for higher patient fees is stronger among specialists than among GPs. Almost one in five GPs, or 19.4%, said they wanted the current fee to remain unchanged.
According to editor-in-chief Filip Ceulemans, respondents clearly feel that the current fees, which have not been index-linked for years, should be higher. He said the existing amounts of €1 and €4 are not seen as a real deterrent to the use of primary care.
The publication said there were no significant differences between doctors in Flanders and Wallonia, but there was a notable variation in Brussels. Among Brussels-based respondents, 9.7% said they wanted no patient fee at all, compared with about 4% of all participants.
Artsenkrant said the survey was conducted through its e-newsletter between Wednesday 21 October and Tuesday 27 October, and that 1,263 doctors took part.
The publication also stressed that the poll was based on responses from newsletter readers and was not a representative sample.
