Should we fear a shortage of general practitioners? Despite the installation premiums set up by the Health Insurance, the number of general practitioners in France continues to fall. According to’atlas of medical demographypublished by the National Council of the Order of Physicians (CNOM), their workforce decreased by 8.4% between 2007 and 2016. This “inexorable fall“is worrying, according to the CNOM, which considers that this decline”should continue until 2025 and could result in the loss of one in four general practitioners over the period 2007-2025“.
Increasing retirements
At issue: massive retirements. Between 2007 and 2016, the number of retired doctors increased by 87.7%. And general medicine is the branch most affected by departures not replaced, when medical and surgical specialties see their overall workforce increase.
A shortage that affects cities and the countryside
Between 2007 and 2016, only two French departments (Savoie and Loire-Atlantique) observed a slight increase or stability in the density of general practitioners, which corresponds to the number of doctors in relation to the number of inhabitants. All the other departments recorded a decrease in this density. In Paris as in the department of Nièvre, the fall in the number of general practitioners between 2007 and 2016 reached records, with a drop in staff of 25%. For Yonne and Yvelines, this drop is 21%. “These two examples show that desertification is not exclusively rural.“underlines the CNOM.”It also concerns urban spaces of varying sizes.“But whether in urban or rural areas, the challenge is common: to succeed in guaranteeing, despite this decline, access to healthcare at any point in the territory.
>> To read also:
Health insurance proposes to increase consultations with general practitioners to 25 euros
Doctor seeks replacement on Facebook
Misconception: the attending physician is necessarily a general practitioner
Young doctors: they always prefer to be ophthalmos
