Three Fife surgeries begin search to find GPs to run them

Surgeries in Kinghorn, Burntisland and Valleyfield in West Fife are currently being managed by NHS Fife and Fife Health and Social Care Partnership

But this week, they started the tender process to find doctors prepared to take them over.

Kinghorn Medical Practice, Valleyfield Practice and the Links Practice in Burntisland have been operated by the regional health authorities since the previous GP partners became unable to deliver their contracted general medical services.

Work has been ongoing for some time to identify appropriate interested parties to take over the contract to run the surgeries, returning them to independent contractor status.

NHS Fife said there was a level of interest to merit making the contract to provide general medical services from these three available through a tender process.

It aims to attract new GP contractors with the clinical staffing resources to provide patients with the good standard of service they expect.

GPs interested can now submit a detailed proposal outlining how they would intend to deliver services for patients in any of the three areas. They will assessed in the new year, with any successful bids approved by the NHS Fife Board in Spring 2023.

The process of tendering contracts to provide general medical services has been carried out successfully in other parts of the country. Staff at the surgeries have been informed, and local residents written to.

Dr Christopher McKenna, NHS Fife medical director, said: “We want all patients in Fife to have access to a good quality of service from their local GP practice. The difficulty in sourcing permanent, reliable GP cover at Kinghorn, Links and Valleyfield Medical Practice has meant that this has been incredibly difficult to achieve in recent times.

“Work has been ongoing for some time to identify suitable interested parties to potentially take over the contract to deliver services from all three practices and return them to independent contractor status.

“We believe there is now a sufficient level of interest to merit making these contracts available via a tender process, as had been done successfully in other parts of the country.

“It is important to say, however, that if new management is not found for any of the three practices then our efforts to stabilise these practices and ensure people still have access to appropriate local medical services will continue.

“Most importantly of all, 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.

“The process of tendering the contract to provide general medical services will take a number of months to complete, and we are committed to ensuring that patients are kept up to date with any developments throughout.”

A patient information hub has also been created on the NHS Fife website at: www.nhsfife.org/generalmedicalservices, where there are answers to a number of frequently asked questions.