General practitioner, pediatrician, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, gynecologist, cardiologist… find out the deadlines for having an appointment with the doctor in Occitanie

De fortes disparités d’un territoire à l’autre. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

The Jean-Jaurès Foundation sifted through Doctolib data. Here are the results in France and in Hérault, Gard, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales, Lozère and Aveyron.

How long does it take to get an appointment with a cardiologist, a gynecologist or a general practitioner ? The Jean-Jaurès Foundation provides an overview of access to community medicine in France in a report published Tuesday.

This more nuanced than alarmist survey only takes into account patients who managed to make an appointment on Doctolib. Another bias of the study, patients can sometimes make an appointment on a date that suits them and not necessarily always the quickest one offered to them.

But it offers unprecedented insight by analyzing the statistics of 75,000 healthcare professionals using the platform and nearly 200,000,000 medical consultations in France in 2023, with the ;support of around ten analyzes by geographers, health professionals and elected officials.

What time frame depends on the specialty?

First observation: the time to see a general practitioner is less than three days for 50% of appointments in France, six days for a physiotherapist masseur, seven days for a pediatrician, eleven days for a dentist or physiotherapist.

Click on the infographic to enlarge it. ALLop

But it takes more than two weeks for a psychiatrist (16 days), more than three weeks for a gynecologist (22 days) or an ophthalmologist (25 days).

And even more than a month for a dermatologist (36 days) or a cardiologist (42 days).

Significant disparities

The differences are, moreover, considerable from one territory to another.

For example, to see an obstetrician-gynecologist, you have to wait between one and two months in the Pyrénées-Orientales, but 15 to 30 days in Aude, where the delay on the other hand increases to more than three months for a dermatologist.

The waiting time can vary in France from one day to 97 days for a pediatrician or from 6 days to 123 days for an ophthalmologist. Fourteen departments, spread across seven French regions, are particularly in difficulty with waiting times doubled. These are Gers, Saône-et-Loire, Nièvre and the Territoire de Belfort, Loiret, Cher, Deux-Sèvres, Ardèche, Eure, Calvados, Manche, Loire-Atlantique, Côtes-d’Armor and Pas-de-Calais.

Organizational problems too

But these extended delays are not always linked to the number of doctors. "The issue is therefore that of the organization of care in territories: coordination of care, supported work, use of digital tools", underlines the report.

The delays have, on the other hand, changed little or not at all in two years, "an encouraging signal given the increase in demand for post-care -Covid and the decline in medical demographics, observes the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.