West Cumbria has an “absolutely critical” shortage of GPs, a health boss has warned – as plans to close a village doctor’s surgery are put on hold.
It has also emerged that a number of surgeries in Copeland will soon have more than three times the national recommended number of patients to a GP.
North Cumbria Primary Care Alliance (NCPC) announced earlier this year that an application would be lodged with NHS England to close Frizington Surgery – due to a shortage of GPs.
But the plans have been halted while “all opportunities are explored” by NCPC, which runs Fellview Healthcare, Queen Street Medical Practice, Lowther Medical Centre and Seascale Health Centre.
Mike Hunter, Copeland locality lead for NCPC, outlined the issues facing GP surgeries at a meeting of Copeland Council’s overview and scrutiny committee last week.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr Hunter said: “We’ve had a significant reduction in the number of GPs working at Fellview Healthcare and we could no longer deliver sustainable services in a safe way at Frizington.
“We have since paused that application – that has not been progressed. We are looking at how we might deliver sustainable care in Copeland.
“There is a national shortage of GPs. It’s acute in north Cumbria. It is absolutely critical in west Cumbria.
“All of the practices that we operate in west Cumbria are struggling with GP recruitment.
“Nationally, it’s recommended there is one GP for every 2,250 patients. In the middle of December, when unfortunately another GP leaves us at Fellview, our GPs at Fellview will have an excess of 7,000 patients each.”
Steve Morgan, portfolio holder for commercial services on Copeland Council, said there were a number of things that councillors could do to help “attract medical talent” to the area, including providing pastoral care, finding jobs for spouses and providing more middle-class housing.
He said: “We are behind substantially in west Cumbria in large part because nobody wants to move into the area and a lot of our GPs are retiring and retiring early.”
Jeanette Forster, who represents Sneckyeat on Copeland Council, asked Mr Hunter about the use of agency staff.
Mr Hunter replied: “We’re forced to use locums a lot. We have seen huge pay inflations for locums. We are reliant on locums to deliver services at Fellview.
“Last month, we were quoted £1,750 a day for a locum. We said no but that made our GPs’ jobs more difficult for the day.
“We have spent about £530,000 in the first six months of the year. That’s our entire locum budget gone.
“We have done all sorts to try and recruit GPs. We’ve offered recruitment incentive schemes, training practices. We have trainee GPs in Seascale, Lowther and Fellview.
“When they finish, we make them very generous offers and they go somewhere else. Even those who stay in the area are able to earn much more money, either as a locum or with CHOC, who are able to offer higher salaries.”
Felicity Wilson, deputy chair of the overview and scrutiny committee, said: “One of the problems we have now within the health service is the age of doctors and nurses. There are doctors in partnership who want to retire. They need to retire. A lot of them have dropped dead doing the job.
“That’s the old school, get up and go and see your patient at two o’clock in the morning. That ethos has gone and it’s not going to come back. But it’s very worthwhile fighting for appropriate provision.”
Mr Hunter was also quizzed about the reasons for closing Frizington Surgery and if there was any possibility of keeping the surgery open on certain days.
He said: “It’s a relatively small patient population. We are so thin on the ground, we would have to close other sites.
“There is not an immediate solution on the horizon. Nobody’s going to drive into Copeland with a coach load of GPs.
“In our practices, we have got trainee nurse practitioners, GP registrars, trainee physician associates. All of these people require the supervision of a GP.
“If we take one of the GPs out of the other surgeries, we lose the ability to have trainees on that site.
“We are exploring all the opportunities out there and all of the different people who may be able to help us. Only when he we have reached the end of the road, will we make that decision.
“It might be that we retain Frizington.”
Joseph Ghayouba, who represents Whitehaven Central North, said: “I can see that you are struggling with these decisions. It sounds like there’s no easy answer. You are just having to run things on a shoestring with the resources you’ve got.”
He added that the doctor to patient ratio for Fellview Healthcare “really, really concerned” him.
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