THE overhaul of Scottish general practice must be accelerated to overcome “deep-seated problems” with recruitment and retention, a GP leader has said.
Dr Andrew Buist of BMA Scotland said there now needed to be “an increased pace of change”.
Read more: Rural GP leader quits Scottish Government taskforce
He was speaking as the trade union marked the first anniversary of the new Scottish GP contract coming into force in April 2018.
It includes a minimum earnings guarantee, which takes effect this month, to ensure no full-time GP partner earns less than £70,000 a year.
But the contract also promised to make general practice a more attractive career to doctors and reduce their workload.
Read more: Highland GPs feel 'totally betrayed' by new GP contract's funding formula
Dr Buist said: “Of course, these deep-seated problems - such as there simply not being enough GPs - were never going to be solved in a single year.
"Over the last 12 months, I have seen a mixed picture across Scotland and varied progress. There is much work to be done, so we need to see an increased pace of change.”
Dr Buist added: “I want to see the numbers of GPs start to rise again, with reduced vacancies, young doctors choosing to become GP partners in Scotland and older GPs who were thinking about retirement to decide they might keep going for a few more years.”
The GP contract was negotiated between the Scottish Government and BMA Scotland.
Its intention was to reframe family doctors as “expert medical generalists”, with more nurses, physiotherapists and pharmacists based in GP surgeries to free up more time for doctors to spend with patients.
However, it was widely opposed by GPs in rural areas who were alarmed that its new funding formula would see GP practices in urban areas - especially affluent postcodes with large elderly populations - receive thousands of pounds extra while rural practices got no uplift at all.
Dr David Hogg, vice chair of the Rural GP Association of Scotland, recently quit the Scottish Government's Rural Short Life Working Group (SLWG) - a taskforce set up to try to address the potentially negative impacts of the new contract on rural GPs - in protest at its failure to get to grips with key concerns including the funding formula and its potential to exacerbate recruitment and retention problems for rural practices.
The contract is also split into two phases, with the more controversial second phase still requiring a majority vote from GPs before it can come into effect in 2021.
Some GP partners are concerned that Phase Two will require them to disclose a detailed breakdown of their earnings annually to the Scottish Government, and that shifting responsibility for employing support staff away from GP practices to health boards will lead to vacancies lying emptier for longer if NHS budgets are tight.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We have a record number of GPs working in Scotland and are working to further increase the current numbers by at least 800 in the next 10 years."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here