Dr Jean-Louis Gerschtein, president of the CPTS of the French Riviera: “We try to project care wherever it is needed”
One of the main roles of the CPTS in the fight once morest medical desertification is to attract doctors to the territory and then to support them. How do you do it?
We capitalize on what we do, we use all the levers we have. Today, we are lucky to be attractive thanks to the health center in Roya and the one opened in July 2022 on the Menton coast. In Breil-sur-Roya, we welcome a lot of interns who know our organizational capacity, know what we have built on the territory, and with whom we keep a very strong bond. This means that if they do not want to stay working in a rural environment, that they have more urban profiles, we can direct them towards the coast. As for medical specialists, we are working with private clinics. The idea is to provide secondary care, such as cardiology for example.
Where are we at the coastal health center today?
We have three general practitioners in practice, two of whom are newcomers, and a new doctor who will be setting up on April 1. That’s not bad for a sector where there were none left! We are now going to organize ourselves so that they can, in turn, go to Roquebrune-Cap-Martin a few days a week. We try to project care wherever it is needed..
The Menton basin is still classified as an under-dense area by the Regional Health Agency, but between the coastal health center and this type of initiative carried out by the municipalities, are we on the right track?
It’s a little too early to claim victory. In the Menton basin, we still have half of the doctors who are going to retire in the next five years and that was not anticipated. It’s a real haemorrhage. We have created structures for one or two years that allow us to attract young doctors, but will we be able to bring in as many and as quickly? It’s still very fragile. In Breil-sur-Roya, people have an appointment with a doctor during the day. In Menton, you still have to wait at best three or even four days. And you have to understand that it’s a dynamic that takes a lot of energy and time, and that it remains human above all else. If tomorrow a doctor wants to leave, change plans, that calls everything into question. It is not enough to have a room, to put a coat of paint and write “health center” on it. First, professionals are needed.