# Courrier du médecin traitant for Psychiatre



## kgalb2 (Jun 28, 2016)

Hello everyone! We are officially settled in the South of France after moving in October. We have everyone registered with CPAM and we have our attestation de droits. Before leaving the US, I was seeing a therapist for some mental health things and wanted to pick it back up again in France. I found a Psychiatre on DoctoLib, booked an appointment, and all was looking great.

However, reading the documents to bring with you, something caught my eye.



> Pensez à vous munir des éventuels documents suivants :
> 
> courrier du médecin traitant ;
> ordonnances des traitements en cours ;
> comptes-rendus d'hospitalisation ou de consultations spécialisées le cas échéant.


Notably, the "courrier du médecin traitant", which sounds a lot like a referral from your primary doctor. I'm pretty familiar with this concept in the US (you pretty much can't see a specialist without one). However, I don't yet have a médecin traitant in France and so I'm wondering how hard of a requirement is this in France? Can I go see this doctor without that or is that a non-starter? 

My inclination is to cancel the appointment, find a médecin traitant, and then book this at a later time. I would really like to get back on this track especially given all of the recent changes in my life, but I don't really want to be a burden and show up empty-handed.


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Basically, if you don't have the proper referral from a medecin traitant, I think your reimbursement from the sécu is what's mainly affected. But it might not be a bad idea to line up a medecin traitant first if you can wait a bit. (If you're on any meds, the medecin traitant can probably renew them for a short period of time until all the paperwork goes through.) The trick is to find a doctor willing to take on new patients. But Doctolib comes in handy there, too.

Basically the medecin traitant has to sign off on a paper stating that s/he is willing (and able, to be fair) to track you as a patient (i.e. agree to receive and maintain reports of all tests, specialist treatments, etc. and be responsible for viewing them as necessary). Submit that paper to the sécu (CPAM) and that's that. (Though I hear that it may be possible for the doctor to directly submit your paperwork to the CPAM - and that's the quickest solution.)


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## kgalb2 (Jun 28, 2016)

Bevdeforges said:


> Basically, if you don't have the proper referral from a medecin traitant, I think your reimbursement from the sécu is what's mainly affected. But it might not be a bad idea to line up a medecin traitant first if you can wait a bit. (If you're on any meds, the medecin traitant can probably renew them for a short period of time until all the paperwork goes through.) The trick is to find a doctor willing to take on new patients. But Doctolib comes in handy there, too.
> 
> Basically the medecin traitant has to sign off on a paper stating that s/he is willing (and able, to be fair) to track you as a patient (i.e. agree to receive and maintain reports of all tests, specialist treatments, etc. and be responsible for viewing them as necessary). Submit that paper to the sécu (CPAM) and that's that. (Though I hear that it may be possible for the doctor to directly submit your paperwork to the CPAM - and that's the quickest solution.)


That makes sense. I think my sécu is already impacted (i.e. I am going to have slower reimbursements) based on the fact that my bank is technically a German bank (N26) and reimbursements go quicker with a French RIB.

I think I may cancel this and go with your suggested route as it seems the best long-term solution rather than a short-term one-off appointment.


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