The deputies approved the bill on Wednesday evening the bill on Wednesday evening aimed at regulating the installation of doctors To combat medical deserts. The text, carried by a transpartisan group of more than 250 deputies ranging from LFI to nearly a third of the LR group and to which the profession and the government were opposed, was adopted very largely by 99 votes against 9.
“We often say that when medical deserts advance, it is the Republic that backs up. Tonight, we have given a little republic in our collective organization, this Republic which must watch over each of us, who we are, wherever we live, because our health cannot depend on our postal code, “said his rapporteur, the socialist deputy Guillaume Garot, said at the end of the vote.
The text must now continue its shuttle in the Senate by finding space in the calendar, probably from fall, while the lower chamber will soon study its own bill against medical deserts, from LR. It provides for an installation of liberal doctors in the areas best provided for in practitioners, conditioned on the commitment to exercise in parallel part -time in a deficit area.
Flow of doctors
Launched in 2022 by the socialist Guillaume Garot, the Transpartisan group had already succeeded, in early April, to have adopted the key article regulating the installation of doctors on the territory. Before settling down, liberal or employee doctors should request the approval of the Regional Health Agency. He would be right in an area missing from caregivers, but in the better provided territories, the doctor could only settle when another leaves.
A “territorial indicator” taking into account the “medical time available by patient” and “the demographic, health and socio-economic situation of the territory”, would be used to enclose regulation, which would only concern “13 % of the territory” according to his supporters. A “cornerstone of all truly effective policy”, insists the Transpartisan group.
But a casus belli for many doctors, including students and medical interns, who demonstrated at the end of April. For the Minister of Health and former cardiologist Yannick Neuder (LR), “the remedy is worse than evil”. He proposes to train more caregivers and therefore consider that it is rather necessary to remove the numerus, a proposal which he will try to advance “soon in connection with the Senate”, he recalled on TF1 on Tuesday.
The executive also advances on its own plan, whose flagship measure would consist of imposing on practitioners up to two days per month of consultations in priority areas. “It is not freedom of installation that jeopardizes access to care” but ” the structural shortage of doctors (and the) lack of attractiveness of the liberal sector, ”according to a statement from the young doctors’ union on Monday.
The Transpartisan group argues that regulation and increase in the number of doctors must go together. Just like the other articles they will defend this week: in particular to remove the increase in moderating ticket in the absence of a doctor or restore the obligation to participate in the permanence of care.
