“We need to simplify the practice of small town medicine and to do that we need to get rid of administrative charges. Otherwise, he said, they need to get rid of the administrative hold-up that doesn’t exist in other countries. He argues, like the doctors’ trade unions, that in order to increase the profession’s attractivity, the government needs to increase the €25 consultation price so that GPs can hire people to handle administrative tasks.

“We must stop having a logic of coercion because we actually lack doctors, and the few that are there, we would like to force them to work in a certain way”. “If we don’t want any more medical deserts, we have to increase the number of trained doctors,” he said.

On life support: can France's struggling healthcare system be saved?Ĭhiche argued that the attempt was one example of politicians trying to force medical doctors to work in a certain way instead of recruiting more doctors.

The amendment, opposed by many doctors and the government, was rejected. MPs from multiple political groups had proposed an amendment that aimed to better distribute doctors across the country by forcing them to receive authorisation from a regional health agency before practising in areas where there are enough doctors. Gustave Richard, from the Association of Small Towns in France (APVF), said that while some measures “go in the right direction,” the failure of one amendment in the parliament that would have made greater changes was a “missed opportunity”. It also would create a “referent nurse” position to help coordinate patient care and will automatically register health professionals as part of communities to “encourage caregivers to work with each other”. The proposed law, which still needs to pass the Senate, would open up a social engagement contract for students in their second year of medical school to work in areas without enough doctors and would make it easier for foreign doctors to work in France. ‘Missed opportunity’Īccess to healthcare has been a topic of intense recent debate in France’s parliament, where multiple solutions have been considered but remain subject to fierce disagreements.Ī new draft law was passed through the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, earlier this month that aims to alleviate some of the issues.

“We have a lot of staff who have left the establishment, who are changing activities, and suddenly, that puts pressure on the staff and we can’t constantly replace people,” she said. Simonet added that since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a higher turnover. It's true that training doctors takes time, but on the other hand, if we never start, we'll never see the end of the problem”. “As GPs retire, it will get even worse in the years to come.

Medical doctor hospital