MAP. View the time it takes to get an appointment with a doctor in your department

The Jean-Jaurès Foundation has published a study on waiting times to consult a doctor. Appointments with a general practitioner are the quickest to obtain, but this varies greatly depending on the department, and delays extend considerably for certain specialists.

This is a fairly precise picture of the conditions of access to care. The Jean-Jaurès Foundation and the Doctolib platform have just published a survey revealing a “map of France for access to care”. Concretely, they analyzed the statistics of 70,000 health professionals registered on Doctolib, in ten medical and paramedical fields, for a total of more than 200 million consultations, including 5.5 million teleconsultations.

The first lesson of this study tends to go against the rather gloomy picture that we had of access to care. It appears in particular that half of the appointments with a general practitioner are obtained in less than three days, 41% are even in less than 48 hours.

“The study of the median times for granting an appointment in general medicine confirms that general practitioners remain on the front line to absorb the demand for care, particularly unscheduled”

Jean-Jaurès Foundation

Study of French maps of access to care – Caregivers and patients facing territorial inequalities

So, “in 90% of departments where there are general practitioners using Doctolib, appointment requests are satisfied in less than a week”, we can read in the study. However, the share of appointments within 48 hours has decreased by 3% in three years, “probably reflecting the decline in the demographics of the profession”, recalls the survey. The authors also recognize several biases in this survey. First, the statistics retained only concern users using Doctolib tools. “By nature, they are therefore not representative of all the realities of access to care in the territories”, recalls the investigation. Furthermore, these statistics “do not allow you to have visibility on unsuccessful appointment searches. Clearly, only patients who managed to obtain an appointment on Doctolib are included in the study.

Greater difficulty in consulting specialists

On the other hand, “without surprise”note the authors, “the study distinguishes large disparities of access between the different health professions”. Because the delays between making an appointment and the consultation actually lengthen when you wish to consult certain specialists. So, on average, it takes more than a month to consult a cardiologist or a dermatologist, and more than two weeks to a month to see a gynecologist, a psychiatrist or an ophthalmologist.

More precisely, there was a wait of more than one month in 90% of the departments covered by the study, or even more than two months of wait in a third of them. This last category concerns a fortiori rural departments. And this is precisely the other major aspect of this survey, we obviously need to read these overall results in a little more detail and observe geographical disparities.

Gaps between departments

The study shows that there are sometimes very strong disparities depending on the department in which you are located. Thus, “in 7 regions in France, around fifteen departments are in difficulty”, note the authors. In Gers (Occitanie), in Saône-et-Loire, in Nièvre and the Territoire de Belfort (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), in Loiret and Cher (Centre-Val-de-Loire), in Deux- Sèvres (Nouvelle-Aquitaine) and Ardèche (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes), Eure, Calvados and Manche (Normandy), Loire-Atlantique and Côtes-d’Armor (Brittany), as well as Pas -de-Calais (Hauts-de-France), median delays are at least twice the national average, for at least three specialties.

“It is in ophthalmology, dermatology and pediatrics that the differences between departments are the greatest: there is a difference of more than 90 days between the departments where the deadlines are the quickest and those where they are the shortest .”

Jean-Jaurès Foundation

Study of French maps of access to care – Caregivers and patients facing territorial inequalities

On the contrary, the most homogeneous professions at the departmental level are general practitioners, masseurs-physiotherapists and midwives, specifies the study. So, “most maps of median times of access to care tend to overlap with maps of medical demography and more broadly with maps of territorial inequalities in France”the researchers note, “even if this comparison must be taken with caution”they note.