News / More cash available to attract GPs to isles
RURAL health boards such as NHS Shetland will soon be able to offer better financial incentives as part of their bid to attract much needed GPs to the isles.
Scottish health minister Alex Neil has again confirmed that additional “golden hello” payments will be available as of 1 January in rural areas. The move was described as a “move in the right direction by isles MSP Tavish Scott.
NHS Shetland is currently trying to fill the equivalent of 3.5 GP posts at health board-led health centres in Lerwick, Whalsay and Yell.
NHS Shetland chairman Ian Kinniburgh said the cost of employing locums to provider health cover was at least twice as high as having permanent GPs in place.
Up until now every new GP anywhere in Scotland has been entitled to a “golden hello” payment of at least £5,000.
Following negotiations between Scottish Government and the Scottish General Practitioners’ Committee this arrangement will cease at the end of the year – with available funds being targeted at remote and deprived areas.
Kinniburgh said on Thursday that the isles’ health board would follow this up “to maximise the opportunity for Shetland”.
The plight of islanders in Whalsay who have been waiting for a permanent GP for more than a year was highlighted by Scott in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday.
“Whalsay has been waiting more than a year for a full time GP,” he said. “Three separate recruitment exercises have failed.
“Shetland health board are therefore spending money on temporary doctors and expensive recruitment advertisements. There are other GP posts that need filling across Shetland.
“Allowing local health boards to make payments available to practices in rural and remote areas with recruitment difficulties is a move in the right direction and will hopefully bring greater stability to general practices across Shetland.”
Shetland has a mixture of independent surgeries – the standard across Scotland – and health board-led practices.
Kinniburgh said: “In Shetland we have become increasingly required to fill gaps where independent practices have either ceased to exist, or where the challenges of running an independent practice has proved to be very difficult and we have been asked to step in and take over some of that burden.
“For instance at the present time we run Lerwick as a salaried practice where it was previously an independent practice; we are looking to recruit in Whalsay because we couldn’t attract an independent GP to run a practice there, and the same in Yell.
“So we directly employ GPs to provide GP services in those locations. In the rest of Shetland there remain independent practices running as businesses.”
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