NHS Tayside is exploring the possibility of providing a local community health service at a community nurses’ house in Bridge of Earn.
The move follows the controversial closure of the Bridge of Earn Medical Practice in August.
There are moves to open a “nurse-led” practice initially but the chief officer for Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) has vowed to look at reinstating a GP practice “at the earliest possible opportunity.”
Chief officer for Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), Gordon Paterson, has announced NHS Tayside will “look to invest whatever money is necessary to reinstate a primary health care service” in the Perthshire village.
The “nurse-led” service would allow patients to get services that don’t require a GP.
The nurses’ house is on the village’s Station Road close to the school and pharmacy.
Mr Paterson revealed the plans to a vastly diminished group of members of the Integration Joint Board (IJB) who had stayed beyond 5pm on Friday to hear an update on the Bridge of Earn situation.
Members of the board had drifted away exhausted after an entire day of intense discussion on a jam-packed agenda.
Mr Paterson told the select group there had previously been plans to move the GP surgery to the nurses’ house but it had attracted concern.
Now, the possibility of creating two nurse-led treatment rooms at the community nurses’ house is being considered. Mr Paterson says Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) and mental health services have been “actively involved” in these discussions.
SNP councillor Eric Drysdale, who sits on the IJB, said it came after 11 years of “relative inaction by NHS Tayside.”
He alluded to the fact Conservative MSP Liz Smith questioned the first minister in Parliament last week on the surgery’s closure and its impact on Perth and the surrounding area, where GPs have had to absorb 3500 patients.
Mr Paterson said he had met with NHS Tayside’s chief executive Grant Archibald and health secretary Jeane Freeman MSP to risk assess the situation.
Almond and Earn Conservative councillor Kathleen Baird, who appeared in the public gallery at 3.30pm expecting the issue to be discussed then, and subsequently left, told us she was aware this possibility was being explored.
She said: “It would be a great help to the community if it happened. It’s been on our wish list.”
She says it would save patients travelling to Perth surgeries for the likes of blood tests and immunisations and would be a “massive help.”
On Friday, Mr Paterson said that there was the potential to look at a GP surgery on the Oudenarde site if the development of around 1800 houses in the area goes ahead.
He moved a motion, seconded by Cllr Drysdale to “look to reintroduce GP services (in Bridge of Earn) at the earliest possible opportunity.”
