Three days a week, the Doctobus meets the inhabitants of eight towns in the Évreux conurbation. On board, retired doctors take care of the patients.
By Lise Lacombe for Le Point
© Marlene Awaad / MAXPPP / IP3 PRESS/MAXPPP
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« Ogetting an appointment so quickly is so rare that I jumped on it! Laeticia is a patient of the Doctobus medical practice. Like her, there are between 13,000 and 15,000 inhabitants of the Évreux agglomeration struggling to find a treating doctor, as noted The Parisian.
But with this new health center installed in a motorhome, Laeticia got her appointment the same day she called. Avoiding long waiting times is one of the missions of this mobile medical unit. Julien Boscher, head of the health and disability center for the town and conurbation of Évreux, explains: “Our particularity is to have daily reactivity, with appointments possible within 48 hours. »
READ ALSOThe healthy city, the model for the futureTo carry out this challenge and offer a local service for patients who are often elderly, the vehicle parks three times a week in front of the village hall of the town, which has been transformed into a waiting room. On board, doctors, like Didier Lefebvre, 73 years old. After forty years of classic medical practice in the office, he decided to return to his profession and consults once a week in the vehicle. Like him, five of the six practitioners who practice in the racing car are retired.
The driver’s seat converted into a practitioner’s chair
The doctor explains to Parisian the distress of his patients, who say they have “phoned to the right, to the left”, but “no one wants [les] take “. Didier Lefebvre, aware of “the severe shortage of doctors in the Eure” and “relieved of administrative tasks”, says he is motivated by this resumption of activity even if the working conditions are new for him.
In this Doctobus, space is limited and the driver’s seat has been transformed into a practitioner’s chair. But according to the doctor from Rouen, “we get used to it” and “we can do the same medicine as in a practice”. Most of the time, “three quarters” of patients come to see him for a prescription renewal because their doctor has retired.
For Julien Boscher, the “Doctobus” had become more than urgent in the face of a “truly dramatic” situation. In the coming weeks, “new doctors will leave the territory”, he explains. In the town of Évreux alone, 6,600 people cannot find a general practitioner.
Itinerant medicine is growing
This system is the first to be set up by a local authority, even if experiments with mobile units have already been carried out in other areas such as in Orne. Already, in 2020, the department had launched the Médicobus, a mobile consultation office.
READ ALSOMedical desert in Orléans: an oasis in sight
In the same department, Mammobile has been traveling to remote rural communities for thirty years to offer free breast cancer screening. In the Var, a Gynécobus has been crisscrossing the roads since September while the Opti’soins truck offers medical follow-up to pregnant women in Auvergne.
Initiatives that are multiplying and, if they do not solve the problem of the medical desert, make it possible to relieve rural areas. According to Julien Boscher, itinerant medicine is an “interesting response” in territories “where the issue of mobility is crucial”. A medical revolution to which we will have to get used according to him: “The doctors of today are not those of yesterday. »