Question 15232 — medicine

Summary

Mr. Thierry Perez alerts the Minister of Health, Families, Autonomy and People with Disabilities to the worrying situation at the radiology center in La Tour-du-Pin, in Isère, the closure of which was announced for June 30, 2026 by the private medical imaging group that has owned the site for three years. This decision, made without prior consultation with employees or local elected officials, concerns a welcoming center almost a hundred patients every day and whose activity showed, according to the staff, no sign of failure justifying such a measure. This practice, founded more than a century ago, constitutes an essential link in the healthcare offering in a living area bringing together La Tour-du-Pin and the surrounding municipalities of Nord-Isère, a territory already weakened by a worrying dynamic of medical desertification. The disappearance of this center would have the immediate consequences of an extension of appointment times in surrounding structures, the obligation for patients to travel long distances to access examinations that are nevertheless essential, delays in diagnosis and medical care and saturation of neighboring centers and increased isolation of the most fragile people, in particular the elderly or people without means of support. transportation. This case is unfortunately not isolated. The National Federation of Radiologists (FNMR) has repeatedly alerted elected officials and supervisory authorities to similar situations observed in several French regions, resulting from sudden and medically inappropriate closures of centers previously purchased by private capital groups. This phenomenon of increasing financialization of structures of liberal medical imaging raises legitimate questions about the compatibility between the logic of profitability of investors and the imperatives of continuity, territorial coherence and equity in access to care. It should also be noted that the pricing measures adopted in 2025 with regard to the profession of radiologist have weakened the economic balance of numerous structures, creating a context likely to to accelerate these disengagement movements to the detriment of rural and peri-urban territories. Consequently, he asks what measures the Government intends to take to regulate the takeovers of private radiology practices and centers by capitalistic groups, in order to prevent sudden closures which aggravate medical desertification in the territories; if the Government plans to submit the decisions of closure of medical imaging structures to a mandatory prior information and consultation procedure involving regional health agencies (ARS), local elected officials and representatives of the health professionals concerned, similar to what applies to hospitals; if the Government is able to evaluate, on a national scale, the number of private radiology centers having been the subject of a takeover by investment funds over the last ten years and among them, how many have been closed or experienced a significant reduction in their activity and what measures it intends to take so that pricing measures affecting private radiology do not constitute an aggravating factor in the withdrawal of private operators from the most fragile territories, thus accentuating inequalities in access to care.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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