Residents of rural communities consume 16% less hospital care than the national average. This is what emerges from a study by the AMRF (the Association of Rural Mayors of France), revealed this Monday, November 13.
Patients residing in rural communities “very sparsely populated areas consume 16% less hospital care than the national average”, according to a study by the AMRF (association of rural mayors of France) revealed by France Bleu on Monday November 13. This investigation, which analyzed “the geographical distribution of more than 18 million hospital stays in France in 2021”establishes this observation which corroborates the problem of medical deserts in rural areas: the further away we are, the less we are treated.
The AMRF denounces the “French health disaster”. The study concerns 6,300 geographical sectors, depending on their rural or urban characteristics. For each sector, the survey calculated comparative hospitalization indices.
If we compare, this time, the consumption of care between urban and rural areas, we note that isolated rural people consume 20% less hospital care, up to -30% if we consider dialysis sessions and chemotherapy. According to the conclusions of this study entrusted to the geographer Emmanuel Vigneron, there is a “determining role of distance in the use of hospital care”but also “the scarcity of treating doctors in rural areas”.
Plea for more local hospitals
For other areas of health, there is 18% less hospital care for births and neonatology, less 5% for gyneco-obstetrics, up to less 8% in surgery. The investigation points “the removal of hospital technical platforms from rural areas for the benefit of metropolises”for reasons of “security” according to those in power, which results, estimates the AMRF survey, “transport delays and enormous costs”. “The further I live from a university hospital, the less advantaged I am to have an operation”summarizes the study which “advocates in favor of strengthening local hospitals”.
For the AMRF, the purpose of this study is “to provide rural elected officials with new arguments and bring new data to the public debate to form an informed opinion on the reality of the French health disaster”. To remedy this, the AMRF puts forward several proposals, in particular “give health students the means to do internships outside the place of initial training, develop coordinated care teams around the patient” And “a better distribution of health professionals”.
Method
The study here focuses on short-stay hospitalization in medicine, surgery and obstetrics using data from the PMSI (Medicalization of Information Systems Program) which collects data for all hospitalizations taking place on French territory. .
The PMSI 2021 data relates to the geographical analysis of the 18,604,110 RSA (Anonymized Stay Summaries) carried out in France during the year 2021. The “geographic sectors” of the PMSI are classic postal codes or postal codes grouped into cases of postal code population less than 5,000 inhabitants. There are 6,161 “geographic sectors” of the PMSI geolocated in mainland France made up of municipalities or groupings of municipalities. Added to this are 139 overseas sectors, or 6,300 geographic codes.