Has the diffusion of primary care teams in France improved attraction and retention of general practitioners in rural areas?

•Study of General Practitioners (GPs) densities trends in France during 2004–2012.•Comparison of trends in areas with and without Primary Care Team (PCTs).•Spatial taxonomy is used to characterize treated and control areas.•Difference-in-differences model estimates before and after trends and effects of PCTs.•Results suggest that PCTs help to attract and retain GPs in underserved areas. Many countries, including France, are facing the old and persistent problem of geographical inequalities of their health human resources, in particular general practitioners (GPs). This situation leads, among other things, to underserved areas, which could result in a lower level of primary health care accessibility. Since the mid-2000s in France, several policies were implemented to provide financial as well as other incentives to support the development of multi-professional group practices, Primary Care Teams (PCTs), in order to attract and retain GPs in underserved areas. This study aims to measure the impact of PCTs settlement on the evolution of GP density in rural areas. To this end, we compare the evolution of GP density between rural areas with PCTs and similar rural areas without PCTs, before (2004–2008) and after (2008–2012) the development of PCTs facilities. The results show that PCTs are mainly located in underserved areas and suggest that they could attract and retain GPs there. Those results should be of interest to countries facing relatively similar geographical inequalities issues and that are also experimenting with multi-professional group practices.