10 additional general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants are associated with an average increase of 51.4 days in life expectancy.
A simple increase in the number of general practitioners would save almost two months of life expectancy for the population, according to a new American study. The objective here was “to identify changes in the supply of doctors in American counties and the associations between these changes and population mortality”, indicate the authors in the preamble.
An average increase of 51.4 days in life expectancy
In the United States, the number of doctors has increased overall in recent years, but their distribution across the territory is increasingly unequal. The proportion of US practitioners fell from 196,014 in 2005 to 204,419 in 2015, but the average supply declined from 46 general practitioners to 41 per 100,000 population, with larger declines in rural areas.
Based on this, the researchers calculated that 10 additional general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants were associated with an average increase of 51.4 days in life expectancy, while an increase of 10 specialists per 100,000 inhabitants corresponded to 19 ,2 days of additional life expectancy. “10 additional general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants were associated with a reduction of 0.9% to 1.4% in cardiovascular, cancer and respiratory mortality”, also indicates the trial, which is based on medical data from 3142 US counties.
The number of French doctors in regular activity has decreased by 10%
Since 2010, the number of French doctors in regular activity has decreased by 10%, and this downward trend primarily concerns general practitioners. While there were 94,261 in regular activity in 2010, there were only 87,801 in 2018, a drop of 7.3% since 2010 (0.4% since 2017).
The latest CNOM data also reveal an increase in inequalities between the best off departments in terms of medical density. The worst-off departments now have 1.6 times fewer generalists than the best-off, compared to 1.4 times fewer in 2010. The gap is even greater for various other professions, with for example 2, 6 times fewer ophthalmologists, 2.7 times fewer psychiatrists and 3.6 times fewer dermatologists in the most under-resourced areas.
Recently denounced in a political forum, social and territorial inequalities in health therefore remain at high levels in France and begin at an early age. They are reflected in men by a gap of 13 years in life expectancy between the wealthiest and the poorest, and 8 years for women. For women without any diploma, the risk of giving birth to a child of low weight (less than 2500 grams) is 50% higher than for those with the baccalaureate. In oral matters, less than 2% of the children of executives have at least two untreated decayed teeth, against 11% of the children of workers. In CM2 class, the obesity index varies from 1 to 10 between children of managers and workers.
.
