REPORTAGE
"It’s all getting dusty ... It’s closed since September", deplores the mayor of Oberbruck, Jacques Behra, pointing to compresses, bottles of disinfectant, screens and webcams not yet cleared. There was everything you needed in this Haut-Rhin telemedicine cabinet, which operated for three years. The objective of the place, the first in France, was to fight against medical deserts by allowing patients to benefit from the diagnosis of specialists not present on site.
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"I'm sad that it closes," Denise said at the microphone of Europe 1. "Once, I had eye problems and there was snow. I did not need to go get the car [to go see], I got off here. " She relates in particular the conversations on screens interposed with the doctors: "There was one in Avignon. As it was snowing, the nurse said 'we are going to send him a photo'." Denise now admits to feeling abandoned.
Need for doctors in the sector
"The association that managed [the firm] did not make it financially because it was supported by the Regional Health Agency and that the latter stopped the experiment," explains Jacques Behra. Only consultations carried out remotely by a doctor in the sector were reimbursed. These are more and more difficult to find. "We may have left a little early, but I am convinced that [telemedicine] will work," he concluded.