Health service gets £18.5m boost

More GPs will be recruited for rural areas

Moves to attract more family doctors and nurses to deprived and rural areas of Scotland have been unveiled by the health minister.

Susan Deacon said £18.5m would be spent over three years to fund up to 50 general practicioner posts as well as an additional 50 nursing posts.

The initiative, announced on Monday, will also give GPs the option of becoming NHS employees, for the first time, to protect their salaries.

Ms Deacon gave a quality award to Aberdeen's Northfield and Mastrick Medical Practice - which piloted the changes - when she detailed her plans.

Ms Deacon aims to see 50 nursing posts funded

She said the Northfield community was deprived and had had difficulty filling a GP post, meaning locum doctors with no knowledge of the area or patients were regularly employed.

But the minister said the situation had been turned around - in the second year of the pilot scheme, seven applicants wanted to sign up as a GP.

Ms Deacon said: "Our aim is to ensure that people in every part of Scotland - rich or poor, urban or rural - have access to GP services in their communities.

"To deliver GP services where they are needed most - and not just where it is financially attractive for practices to set up.

"This is most pressing in communities where health is worst - and where incomes are lowest.

'Simply pathetic'

"We want to enhance primary care in these areas and one route is through providing more options to the current way GPs are employed."

She added: "The five pilot schemes which we have used to test our ideas are living proof of the benefits which patients will receive from this new initiative."

The Northfield practice was one of five in to have piloted the recruitment of GPs as salaried employees rather than individual contractors.

Recruiting family doctors for practices in rural and deprived areas has become a major problem in recent years with vacancies in some remote areas remaining unfilled for months or even years.

Dr Harden wants more detail on Ms Deacon's plan

GPs are independent contractors paid largely on the basis of patient numbers, and because of that doctors in rural areas tend to earn much less than the Scottish average.

But Ms Deacon will give doctors working in rural practices the option of applying to become employees of the NHS with a flat rate salary.

The move was welcomed by doctors' leaders, but concerns were raised about the implementation of the changes.

Dr Kenneth Harden, of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said: "There has been no consultation with the profession about this allocation at all and we need to clarify is it new money and that's the first issue.

"Another issue is how is it to be distributed at a below board level?

"We know it is to be distributed fairly evenly to boards and we welcome that distribution, we always welcome more money for primary care, but what we don't know is how this will be distributed at a local level."

A spokesman for the Scottish Tories described the minister's announcement as "simply pathetic".

He said 100 extra posts over three years would not be enough to convince the electorate that Labour has delivered on health.