Medical desertification has accelerated in France and could deteriorate further if measures are not taken, warns a study made public Tuesday by the AMF and the French Mutuality, which plead for more « territorialisation ».
“The offer (of care) is poorly distributed over the territory and it is inexorably shrinking”, said Séverine Salgado, health director at the Mutualité Française, during the presentation of the first health barometer carried out with the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).
“The direct consequence is that 11.1% of the French lived in a medical desert” in 2019, the year covered by the study, i.e. 7.4 million French people compared to 5.7 million in 2016 (8.6%). “There is an acceleration of medical desertification”, she noted.
“If we do nothing, the situation will deteriorate”
These figures are larger than those of official statistics (Drees) which estimated in February at 3.8 million people the number of French people living in a medical desert in 2018 (5.7% of the population), which is defined as “An area where the inhabitants can only benefit on average from 2.5 consultations of general medicine per year”.
“If we do nothing, the situation will deteriorate”, Séverine Salgado warned, recalling that many general practitioners are approaching retirement age. “However, it is in the departments where the medical density is the lowest that the doctors are also the oldest”, she warned.
According to the barometer, France has an average of 151 general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants, but the differences are very important between the departments. That of the Eure is the one with the least (94) and that of the Hautes-Alpes is the one that has more (248).
“We knew the medical desert. We also knew the degradation in certain regions ”, reacted François Baroin, the president of the AMF, calling for a “Territorial medical big bang” to remedy.
“We have formulated proposals in terms of health reorganization”, he added, recalling that access to care is not for the moment part of the competence of mayors.
“We need new legislative vehicles so that mayors or inter-municipal authorities can be actors in the financing of general practitioner and hospital medicine”, he asserted.
For Thierry Baudet, president of the Mutualité française, the barometer “Illustrates the very real needs in all of our regions”, pleading for “A new alliance between the State and its territories”.
“Health cannot be reduced to a national and vertical scheme which is declined everywhere in the same way”, he added.
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