Abstract
Liberal practice, as it exists today in France, is the fruit of a long construction. For a long time, it was at the very heart of our health care system, before merging into a health care organization in which the number of players increased. Successive reforms have progressively seen the share of public health care supply take precedence over the logic of private practice, the epicenter of the health care system having shifted. This research work compares private practice with the rest of the health care supply, particularly public health care, and studies its territorial distribution. They are thus set in a global context and a plural supply of care, both public and private, while addressing the disinterest of medical professionals in private practice and verifying that the classically accepted approach still corresponds to contemporary realities. It is then a question of questioning the future, disappearance or survival, of this form of practice which cannot last without renewing itself. Should we then reinvent the liberal practice of medicine, or more modestly propose ways of adapting it, so that a plural offer of care and diversified, and complementary, actors within the organization of care survive? In order to envisage this renewed future, it is necessary to update the "invariants" and "contingents" of liberal practice, which will be distinguished from the notion of liberal profession as defined by Professor Jean Savatier, namely an intellectual, independent and disinterested profession.