[Demand for and supply of health care: general practice in the miners' fund]. / La demande et l'offre des soins: la médecine générale dans le régime minier.

In France, the miners and their families are registered to a special sickness insurance fund. The fund has salaried GPs who are paid on a capitation basis, whereas more than 80 percent of the French population are insured to the "régime général" and are served by private practitioners paid on a fee-for-service basis. During seven weeks, the demand for care in the Miners' Fund was surveyed to assess its volume and variations according to the characteristics (age and sex) of the patients. As expected, the demand for care is higher as concerns the young children and the elderly. These variations have a specific pattern for each type of provided care (office visits, home visits, drug prescriptions, prescriptions of auxiliary care, prescriptions of diagnostic procedures...). Moreover, the demand for care varies according to the characteristics of GPs, age of patients being controlled. For instance, the referral ratio to specialists or hospitals varies according to age of GPs, to their having or not several offices, to their practising or not additional activities (MCH, visit to nursing homes...). It is noteworthy that in the French Miners' Fund, patients have little freedom to choose their GPs and GPs have no freedom to choose their patients, as in the "régime général".