Health bosses bid to find GPs to run busy surgery in Fife town

NHS Fife and the Fife Health and Social Care Partnership have been running Park Road Medical Practice in Rosyth since April after the previous GP partners became unable to deliver their contracted services. The authorities are planning to put the role out to tender in the coming months.

Last month Ne NHS Fife handed the running of Kinghorn Medical Practice, Valleyfield Practice and the Links Practice in Burntisland over to new partners. The aim of the tender process is to attract new GP contractors for the practice with the clinical staffing resources to provide the good standard of service that patients expect and deserve.

Those interested in taking over the general medical services contract will shortly be invited to submit a detailed proposal outlining how they would provide cover for patients. Once received, a thorough process of assessment and evaluation will be completed for each submission early next year.

The process of engaging with the staff has begun and NHS Fife is also writing out to all residents who use the surgery.

Dr Christopher McKenna, NHS Fife medical director, said: “We recognise the importance of ensuring all patients in Fife have access to good quality local medical services. Having taken over the day-to-day running of Park Road earlier this year, we have been working to put in place measures to stabilise the practice and enable it to return independent contractor status.

"This process of making the service available via a tender process has successfully enabled us to source new GP contractors for three other practices in Fife, and we hope to do likewise at Park Road.

“It is important to say, however, that if new management is not found through this process then we will ensure people still have continued and uninterrupted access to appropriate local medical services. Any parties seeking to take over the running of any of the practices will have to demonstrate that they have the clinical staffing resources to provide patients with a good level of service.”