If the hospital in crisis has been in the spotlight for several months, city medicine is nonetheless in difficulty. With the extension of medical deserts and the aggravation of the difficulties of access to care in recent years, liberal doctors will also be at the heart of the consultation on health promised by the government at the start of the school year.
What are they ready to put on the table? Among the main stakeholders, a certain apprehension dominates, while several “red rags” have reappeared in the debates in recent months. On the one hand, the question of the restoration of the obligation of custody – abolished since 2002 – has been brought up to date with the emergency crisis, called for by the Hospital Federation of France. On the other, coercion on the installation of doctors is regularly defended by local elected officials as a response to medical deserts, again with a bill from the socialist deputy of Mayenne Guillaume Garot, rejected in January. Two subjects which cause a unanimous blockage in the union ranks of liberal doctors, where we see only demagoguery and inefficiency behind such measures.
“I approach this moment of consultation with a feeling of anger, recognizes Agnès Giannotti, head of MG France, the main union among general practitioners. I never hear about investment for general medicine, only constraints…” She – like others – never ceases to repeat: “France is a gigantic medical desert, stripping one territory for another will in no way solve the problem, we must help doctors to take care of all those who need it and this requires resources, for example to have more medical assistants in cabinets. » Either find ways to “save” medical time by surrounding the doctor, while medical demography will remain at half mast for several more years, pending the effects of the end of the numerus clausus.
The guards, a “false problem”
“We necessarily fear the strong political gesture on coercion, it’s so easy for the politician, gets angry Philippe Vermersch, from the Union of Liberal Physicians. But it will be a big flop and it will only aggravate the problems of access to care! » With constraint, future doctors will do everything to avoid the specialty of general medicine, we are assured from all sides.
No question of hearing the comparison with other health professionals who are themselves under a constraint to the installation, such as pharmacists: “It’s totally cynical, scolds Jérôme Marty, from the French union for free medicine. We forget that there were too many pharmacists when this was put in place, it was to limit competition, we are short of doctors everywhere. » For the union official, the urgency is elsewhere: “We must increase the consultation fee”, he defends.
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