"Getting an appointment so quickly is so rare that I jumped on it!" Laeticia is a patient of the Doctobus medical practice. Like her, they are between 13,000 and 15,000 inhabitants of the agglomeration of Évreux toiling to find a doctor, as noted by Le Parisien.
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 city and conurbation of Évreux, explains: “Our particularity is to have daily responsiveness, with appointments possible in 48 hours. »
The doctor explains to the Parisian the distress of his patients, who say they have "phoned to the right, to the left", but "nobody wants to take [them]". 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 refill 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 city of Évreux alone, 6,600 people cannot find a treating doctor.
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.
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 Gynecobus has been traveling 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 that we will have to get used to according to him: "Today's doctors are not those of yesterday. »
