Patients who "
teleconsult
" general practitioners are on average more urban and younger than the people seen in their offices, according to a study published Thursday by Drees, the statistical department of health and social ministries.
Remote consultation is not yet the remedy for the “
medical deserts
” of the countryside.
It is indeed for doctors established in the most urbanized territories that the practice has developed most strongly.
“
In Ile-de-France, 7.8% of the activity of liberal general practitioners corresponds to remote consultations in 2021 (12% in Paris and 7.2% in the suburbs of the urban center of Paris), compared to 2 .2% in rural areas excluding overseas territories
”, specifies the DREES.
Teleconsultations are also more often carried out with young patients, regardless of the territory of residence: in 2021, 45.2% were with people aged 15 to 44, compared to 28.7% of in-office consultations .
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Another lesson: teleconsultations do not seem to be aimed primarily at abolishing distances, since for 58.6% of them the doctor practices in the municipality of residence of the patient or less than 5 kilometers away.
Unsurprisingly, the study generally confirms the sharp increase in teleconsultations under the effect of the Covid-19 crisis.
Liberal GPs carried out 13.5 million in 2020, then 9.4 million in 2021, when there were only 80,000 in 2019. The practice takes hold over time, but remains infrequent: it represented 3.7% of liberal general medicine activity in 2021. Less than home visits.