What's the solution to medical deserts? During a visit to Cantal on Friday, François Bayrou recommended imposing up to two days per month of consultation time for doctors in priority areas of the territory.
"Every general practitioner or specialist working in a well-served area will have to devote one or two days per month to consultations in the areas that are most in difficulty," announced the Prime Minister at the end of a visit to Puycalvet, a small rural commune around forty kilometers from Aurillac.
Nearly 30 million consultations per year would thus be redirected to where they are needed.
Doctors' unions aren't thrilled. "It shouldn't be the idea of constraint, of obligation," Agnès Giannotti, president of Médecins Généralistes (MG France, the majority among the liberals), told AFP. "We really do the best we can every day to care for people. We must be protected, we must be helped, we must not be forced or threatened," the official continued.
– “A little late” –
Patricia Lefébure, president of the French Federation of Physicians (FMF), reminded AFP that her organization "was already proposing this principle of solidarity 10-15 years ago." "That was when there were still quite a few doctors. But today, there are no more doctors; it's a bit late," she grumbles.
This principle of solidarity of the medical profession is also presented by the executive as an alternative to the "end of freedom of establishment" of doctors, a measure induced in a cross-party bill whose flagship article was adopted against the advice of the government at the beginning of April by the National Assembly, before the examination of the rest of the text planned for the beginning of May.
This text has provoked anger among private doctors, medical students, interns, and junior doctors, who believe that this bill "will undermine the attractiveness of private practice, currently the primary bulwark of the healthcare system." As long as this bill is not withdrawn, calls for a strike starting April 28 and for demonstrations across France on April 29 will continue.
To present his "pact to combat medical deserts," François Bayrou chose Cantal, a department whose number of general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants has gone from 160.6 in 2010 to 139.4 in 2025, according to the French Medical Association.
– “Fracture” –
By 2024, 6 million French people would be without a primary care physician. "In our opinion, medical deserts are the most serious symptom of the fracture we have allowed to develop over time in our country," notes François Bayrou.
"Illnesses that could be treated quickly persist or worsen because they were not treated in time," the Prime Minister continued.
In addition to the flagship measure of two days per month, the plan presented Friday includes three other "axes." The first deals with training. The idea is to "allow as many young people as possible to access health studies, as close as possible to their local area," and to "recruit in rural or less-privileged areas," a government source explained. A new doctor is more likely to settle in his or her home area: 50% of trained general practitioners practice within 85 km of their place of birth, and one in two facilities is located within 43 km of the university where they are a resident.
The government also wants to delegate new procedures to other healthcare professionals. A patient suffering from seasonal allergic rhinitis could, for example, go to a pharmacy to receive treatment with an expired prescription.
Furthermore, the executive wants to map out the most priority areas, known as "red zones," within one month. This work will be entrusted to the regional health agencies (ARS), "in close collaboration with prefects and local elected officials," in order to "define the highest priority areas, department by department," for the implementation of this plan.
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