Access to doctors becoming difficult

ONLY 8.6 per cent of newly qualified doctors last year set up in independent practice, as opposed to working as replacement doctors or employees.

Doctors’ professional body the Conseil de l’Ordre, which has just published its latest “atlas” of trends in the spread of doctors around France, is concerned that so many of them, 66.8 per cent, chose to take salaries in hospitals or other large institutions, leading to shortages of accessible local specialists and GPs.

The problem is compounded by an unequal spread of doctors around France, leading to some rural areas becoming “medical deserts”, and the fact that that, according to the study, 70 per cent of working French doctors are aged 50 or more, so access to local doctors is expected to get worse as more retire.

All of the most southerly French regions (as well as the Rhône-Alpes) have plenty of doctors per 100,000 inhabitants, as do Alsace and the Ile-de-France. However the Auvergne, Limousin, Brittany, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Lorraine and Franche-Comté have an average amount, while eight regions, including Normandy and Poitou-Charentes, are poorly served.

Many less well supplied areas also lack specialists as a proportion of their doctors: for example, Ile-de-France has 222, per 100,000 while neighbouring Picardy has half the number.

Associations of patients or families have called for measures to limit the amount of doctors who can set up in well served areas. However, the Conseil de l’Ordre is opposed to “coercion”, because it could put people off going into the profession, it has said. The body previously criticised a plan, which has since been mothballed, to fine doctors from urban areas who refused to help out part-time in medical desert areas.