Lhis observation is clear and leads to consensus: our health system is no longer able to respond satisfactorily to the population’s demand for care. We, medical students, interns and young general practitioners, observe and experience this situation on a daily basis alongside our patients: overloaded consultations, extended appointment times, difficulties in orientation towards our healthcare colleagues or towards the hospital, anxiety and exasperation of those whom we cannot take care of within a reasonable time.
The difficulties of some reflecting on those of others, we must act collectively and in solidarity to resolve this crisis, in order to be able to treat and be treated in good conditions.
However, we note that proposals for coercive measures and other accusatory remarks against doctors are increasing, despite our commitment. They often come from politicians who are legitimately worried about the problems of access to healthcare for their constituents. Thus, it is presented as evidence that a poor distribution of doctors on the territory or that a refusal of the youngest to settle in rural areas would be the cause. This diagnosis poses a problem: it is false. And the risk of misdiagnoses is that the proposed remedies are unsuitable: at best they are ineffective, at worst they are deleterious. So let’s start by clearly identifying all the causes of this crisis in access to care.
What journalists and politicians like to call medical deserts, which we prefer to call under-dense areas, today represents 87% of the national territory and is not limited to rural areas, according to figures cited on August 4 by Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, minister in charge of territorial organization and health professions, in an interview with RMC.
For example, according to data from the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES), 86.8% of the Parisian population within the city walls and 96.3% of the population of Ile-de-France are affected by difficulty in accessing a general practitioner. Under-dense areas do not only concern the demography of general practitioners, but also other specialists, local and referral hospitals, and for good reason: approximately 80,000 hospital beds have been closed in twenty years, as well as 822 maternities between 1970 and 2020 (Drees).
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