Fife’s GP crisis shows little sign of relenting after it emerged almost half of the region’s practices are now operating closed lists.
Twenty of the kingdom’s 55 practices are currently said to be full and patients have been reporting waits of up to three months for an appointment as staffing shortages take their toll.
Some patients in west Fife have also complained they have been forced to ring surgeries up to 100 times a day to try and secure a same-day appointment with a medical professional.
The situation comes at a time when new figures revealed Fife’s spending on locum and agency nurses has soared in the past three years from £5.12 million to £6.85 million – a sizeable share of the £98 million being spent Scotland-wide on trying to plug gaps.
The situation has become stark in west Fife, where patients at the Linburn Road Health Centre in Dunfermline have accused the surgery’s same-day appointment system of “failing miserably”.
Three members of the same family said they had called the surgery more than 100 times from 8.30am to be seen but described it as an “impossible task”.
Conservative councillor David J Ross has called for action to deal with the situation, and branded the current state of affairs “unacceptable”.
“There should be more effective ways for people to make appointments and if people have to ring at a certain time of day to make an appointment then there should be sufficient staffing levels to deal with this demand,” he said.
“I am very aware that people both across Fife and also Scotland-wide have great difficulty getting GP appointments with waits of four or six weeks commonplace, therefore it is now time that the SNP government who have been in charge of the health service for 12 years took action to deal with the crisis facing GP services.”
Paul Hawkins, chief executive at NHS Fife, said the health board has faced challenges in recruiting to some GP vacancies, although he said those were “not exclusive to Fife” and experienced by boards across the country.
“It is important to stress that NHS Fife does not recruit GPs – this is carried out by individual medical practices in Fife as it is elsewhere in the country,” he explained.
“Where vacancies exist, the board works collaboratively with practices to identify what additional support we can provide through clinical pharmacy, nurse practitioners, allied health professionals and other community support, to ensure that patients continue to receive good quality local healthcare.
“Furthermore, the General Medical Services contract agreed nationally last year will see the expansion of practice teams.
“This will result in some tasks currently carried out by GPs being carried out by members of a wider multi-disciplinary team, where it is safe and appropriate to do so.”
On the issue of practice lists, Dr Helen Hellewell, associate medical director for the Fife Health and Social Care Partnership, stressed there were systems in place to ensure all patients in Fife have access to a GP within their local area.
“While there are currently practices with full lists, those practices continue to be allocated new patients through NHS Practitioner Services,” she added.
“Crucially, NHS Practitioner Services always allocate patients to practices within their area of residence.”
The locum situation in Fife, however, has also raised concerns, with Fife’s rise in locum and agency spending going against the falling national trend.
Locum GPs in Fife last year were typically paid up to £400 for a day’s work, while the average for NHS Tayside was £525.
Some locum GPs in Tayside earned up to £830 daily though, according to recent figures, although the spend on locums for NHS Tayside has actually fallen from £4.22 million to £3.11 million in the past three years.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We are continuing to drive down the use of agencies and have been clear with boards that they should only use agency as a last resort when temporary staff are required.”
