Health bosses plans for rural
Health board officials have unveiled proposals aimed at defusing the row over medical provision in Aberfoyle.
At a public meeting attended by around 100 people at the village’s Forth Inn managers explained how they intend to spend the £100,000 saved by withdrawing funding for a salaried GP at Aberfoyle Medical Centre.
NHS Forth Valley’s associate medical director Stuart Cumming, a Killearn GP, said it is planned to employ – as early in 2019 as possible – two new part-time GPs.
Their job would be to provide “additional GP support” for the Aberfoyle and Buchlyvie practice and five others in the West Stirlingshire cluster, among them Killearn.
One of the GPs would be assigned to three of the cluster practices while the other is to work with the remaining three.
The new doctors will be expected to provide additional clinical sessions, home visits and cover for holidays and sick leave.
Dr Cumming also gave an assurance that the board was working to improve access closer to patients’ homes for a wider range of services including those provided by physiotherapists, occupational therapists and mental health nurses. Some of these could be based at the Aberfoyle centre.
Moves will also be made to take advantage of the rural GP fellowship scheme, which arranges for newly qualified doctors to work in a number of rural areas across Scotland.
The proposals were drawn up following discussions between doctors from the cluster practices and health board officials.
They were prompted by the public meeting at the Forth Inn in September, at which villagers lined up to condemn the health board for axing the funding which for many years had been used to pay the salary of a third GP at the Aberfoyle and Buchlyvie practice.
Patients complained that the remote and rural nature of the practice warranted extra GP cover and they hit out at the decline in GP sessions at Aberfoyle and what was claimed to be a difficulty in getting appointments.
Officials wanted to use
The six practices are now united, committed and engaged with a way to move forward Dr Stuart Cumming