The Renaissance deputy for Hautes-Pyrénées Benoît Mournet proposes to regulate the installation of doctors in order to offer a better geographical distribution of practitioners. Amendments which will be studied as part of the vote on the bill on access to care through the territorial commitment of professionals.
Increase in places in nursing institutes, to train nursing auxiliaries, end of the numerus clausus, creation of care access services, telemedicine, incentive contracts for settling in areas under-endowed with doctors or even tax exemption for setting up in a rural revitalization zone… So many measures that the Renaissance deputy for the Hautes-Pyrénées Benoît Mournet welcomes.
The former hospital director, however, wants to go further. If he will vote for the bill on access to care through the territorial commitment of professionals, tabled by the Horizons and Renaissance group, and which must be examined from Monday, he has tabled a dozen amendments to this last.
Among the key measures, he proposes to regulate the installation of doctors. The deputy asks: “Today, 97% of the national territory is under-staffed with doctors. But what this figure does not say is that there are strong territorial inequalities.” He lists some data: a gap of 80 to 272 general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants in mainland France; from 50 to 170 overseas. For specialists, the gap is even greater and varies from 74 to 648 in mainland France.
“It is not a question of stigmatizing doctors but of facing the shortage”
Within his permanence, he no longer counts the number of inhabitants who seek him for difficulties in finding a health practitioner. He continues: “It is not a question of stigmatizing doctors but we cannot escape this regulation given the shortage. We cannot let the invisible hand organize this market, we must regulate.”
He proposes several ways to regulate this installation: that freshly graduated students settle their first three years of practice in less endowed areas; a selective agreement: to know if the area is over-staffed, do not grant this agreement to new doctors who settle.
Two bodies could regulate this new mode of operation: the regional health agencies or the councils of the order.
The establishment of a territorial indicator also seems necessary to him in order to carry out a real inventory of the supply of care.
If these measures are not adopted, he proposes that the government commission a report from the General Inspectorate of Social and Financial Affairs in order to study the measures put in place in other countries and which could possibly be duplicated in France.