Consultations: in the Heart of Hérault, general practitioners take care of their deadlines

Des professionnels sous l'eau…mais engagés. Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART

Des solutions sont en places, d'autres à l'étude, pour accélérer la prise de rendez-vous. Les urgences priorisées.

In the Heart of Hérault, you have to be patient to get a consultation with your doctor. This December 6, “Doctolib” is clear: your GP is not available before December 20. The luckiest patients will only have to wait 48 hours to get an appointment with their practitioner. Most healthcare professionals nevertheless reserve slots,   “invisible” on the app, to ensure emergency cases are taken care of. And in the region, every day, medical practices absorb unscheduled care. However, some patients still go to the emergency room in Lodève or Pézenas due to difficulty in obtaining consultation quickly.

D System

"As I can't find a slot with my attending physician, I wait until 8 p.m. to have a consultation without an appointment at the medical center in Clermont-l’Hérault", confides Éléonore*, resident of Clermontais. The fifty-year-old also reveals that she resorts to self-medication or “in advance”, among friends, of medications usually prescribed by a professional. Officially, in the Heart of Hérault, the medical desert is shrinking at the same time as health structures are developing: opening of the Gignac Health Center, development of the Clermont Medical Counter or even recruitment, by the Region, of doctors at the Lodève health center…
However, as evidenced by the consultation times and the continued activity of certain doctors of retirement age: the lack of general practitioners remains significant in the heart of Hérault.
And the myriad of autumnal ailments doesn’t help anything.

Professionals get organized

It’it was also in the middle of a lunch break that Doctor Adrien Plassard, based in Nébian, had  was able to devote a few minutes to bear witness, concretely, to the difficulties of the profession. Example:   "In our practice, in Nébian, a doctor retired but was not replaced. And we lost a regular substitute. We had to postpone scheduled appointments to accommodate emergencies. On our patient base, since the start of the school year, patients who were used to having an appointment within 15 days have had one within a month…"
More broadly, are these difficulties in consulting likely to lead to phenomena of renunciation or self-medicalization ? According to the doctor: "We have little data on this subject". But some patients, when they finally consult, are no longer sick. Sometimes, the symptoms have passed and no longer necessarily require medical advice. Maybe there are some renunciations. This remains difficult to assess but we are trying to respond and, in the territory, we are working to put in place solutions,” explains this representative of the Hérault Territorial Professional Heart Health Community.< /p>

Solutions

Among the solutions, the 48-hour system (for coordination and access to unscheduled care) is already in place. Other systems, such as the Access to Care Service, will soon be available. Although underwater, professionals work on shared solutions, in synergy.
"There are difficulties in the Heart of Hérault, but I think there are even more difficulties in the big cities. For lack of anything better, unscheduled care center systems are being created, which are somewhere between a doctor's office and an emergency room. They meet these needs and the Caps de Lodève continues,” puts Doctor François Cammal, in Canet, into perspective. A doctor who, like others, calls for a revaluation of activity. (Read below).

Éléonore: borrowed first name.

A necessary revaluation ?

According to Doctor Adrien Plassard, the shortage of doctors cannot be explained only by the Numerus Clausus (removed in 2021). « Not all trained general practitioners go into private practice, it’s even quite rare. Some sometimes focus on unscheduled care which allows them not to commit, over time, to a practice while offering remuneration and living conditions that are sometimes more attractive than in a practice. This is why we would like the legislative texts that arrive to slightly revalue the role of the attending physician. »

Doctor François Cammal agrees: « Today we need more doctors. And young doctors will only settle down when working conditions are acceptable and, above all, when the activity is better valued. Revaluation is the key to attractiveness. »

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