An Aberdeen doctor has called for action to tackle a shortfall in GP funding after research revealed a £1.6billion drop in investment over the past decade.
Dr Ken Lawton, a senior partner at Aberdeen’s Great Western Medical Practice, said patient care would suffer if steps were not taken to rectify the situation.
He said newly-released research from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) held no surprises.
The RCGP study shows the share of NHS funding spent on general practice in Scotland has been falling year on year from 9.8% in 2005/06 to a record low of 7.4% in 2014-15.
This has led to a real-terms cumulative loss of investment of £1.6billion, the study said.
Dr Ken Lawton, a senior partner at Great Western Medical Practice, said: “The amount of funding coming into general practice in Scotland has been sinking for the past ten years.
“It is just the way the budgetary cake has been carved up.
“Secondary care has taken the large share of any increases in the budget with consultant numbers in hospitals having doubled.
“I think the funding needs to be shared out more evenly.
“More and more services previously undertaken by hospitals are also coming back into general practice.
“The workload for GPs has increased immensely and so recruitment is becoming increasingly difficult.
“We are working harder than we have ever worked before.”
Dr Lawton said that if nothing was done to address the funding shortfall, services would begin to suffer.
He said: “There will be a deterioration of general practice and the service we can offer to patients.
“It will take longer to see a GP and as a result, there will be an increased strain put on medical services.
“We battled hard to maintain a one-week maximum waiting time for an appointment with a GP but now it is up to three or four weeks.”
However, Health Secretary Shona Robison said the RCGP study did not reflect the reality.
She added: “Funding for GPs has actually increased each year under this government, rising from £704.61 million in 2007-08 to £852.57 million in 2014-15 – at the same time as we have increased the overall NHS budget in Scotland to £13 billion a year.
“Scotland has the highest number of GPs per head of the population of the four UK countries and under this Government the number of GPs working in Scotland has increased by seven percent.”