Can public authorities regulate the place of installation of doctors? It is an open door for the transparty bill “against medical deserts” carried by the deputy director of Guillaume Garot. One of the key articles, adopted against government opinion, must end the freedom to install these health professionals.
The objective? A “better doctors distribution” throughout the territory. These must request the authorization to establish themselves in the local Regional Health Agencies (ARS) (AR), based on the opinion of the departmental order of doctors to determine the needs.
The less endowed Eure, Ain and Mayenne
Therefore, there are no thresholds for a maximum number of doctors in a given territory. But the data of the National Council of the Order of Physicians published in 2025 allow reading marked differences between the various departments.
As expected, this card seems to read that health professionals are not distributed uniformly in France. At least one department has 171 professionals per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the maximum of 899.
The order indicates “territorial disparities within the regions. We contacted, for example, the departments” in the center of the metropolis and around the Parisian basin, the least gifted. “With the podium of the least gifted: Eure, Ain and Mayenne.
On the contrary, health professionals tend to regroup more in large cities, but also on the coasts or near the borders. The podium of the departments where the attention offer is the most important: Paris, the Hautes-Alpes and the Alps-Maritimes.
“The general population and workforce of active doctors do not necessarily evolve in the same direction since 2010,” the order specifies in their balance sheet.
A volume problem rather than distribution?
The proposal carried by the deputies is presented as a “short -term” solution to the urgency of medical desertification in a large part of the French departments.
“The need for installation regulation remains a shared conviction within the transparty work group, without considering the only response to be provided,” defends the 250 parliamentarians gathered behind this initiative.
But is it just a rustina? “The shortage of doctors, even potentially regulated, remains a shortage,” argued Health Minister Yannick Neuder.
Professional and union organizations behind the 200,000 professionals have the same line. By deplorating an attack on their freedoms, doctors feared NTDES “counterproductive effects”: a part of the appeal of the profession that would lead to less vocations and, therefore, … less doctors.
Therefore, the best way is the training of new professionals, especially in the most tense specialties, such as dermatology. In this sense, the lobbyists advocate the implementation of incentives by the State, such as installation premiums, the lack of tangible effects has already been demonstrated (Drees, 2021).
Source: BFM TV
