An ambitious proposal to establish a medical school in Inverness are to be at the heart of Conservative plans to end the NHS recruitment crisis in the Highlands.
The Tories believe that setting up the first institution for people to study to become doctors in the north would create an additional 150 medical training places.
The proposal, which will be part of the Scottish Conservative manifesto for the 2021 Scottish election, would aim to train 750 doctors over the next parliament.
No detailed costings have yet been carried out for the project, with the Conservatives suggesting that a feasibility study should be done to come up with a figure.
But the plan would be for the new school to be located in the Centre for Health Science in Inverness to minimise construction costs.
The policy has been drawn up in response to the difficulties experienced by NHS Highland when it comes to attracting and retaining staff.
Remote areas like Caithness have struggled to recruit GPs. Difficulties recruiting staff have led to NHS spending more than £20million on locums, agency and bank staff this year so far.
There was astonishment lat year that the health board spent almost £1million on two locum consultants stationed in Caithness and Fort William.
The Conservatives believe that an Inverness medical school would encourage more locals to become doctors. Then, once they had qualified, they would be more inclined to stay in the area.
Scotland currently has five medical schools based at Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Andrews.
Shadow health secretary Miles Briggs claimed the Scottish Government had “mismanaged” NHS workforce planning and current levels of training places would not meet demand.
“I believe there is a positive case for the development of a new medical degree and medical school based in the north and want to start taking forward conversations to help achieve this,” he said.
“Under the proposal a new medical school in Inverness could see an additional 150 medical training places developed with the potential for an additional 750 places to study medicine being made available to Scots to help address the shortage of medics and GPs working in our NHS over the course of the next parliament.
“Under the SNP government we have seen a regressive cap on the numbers of Scots able to study medicine at Scottish medical schools which has resulted in the number of Scottish domiciled students gaining a place to study medicine at a Scottish university collapsing to an all-time low, with less than 50% of students studying medicine in Scotland today being Scottish domiciled.”
Highland Tory MSP Edward Mountain backed the proposal and said it would “ultimately strengthen” the NHS. He added: “If we can train and recruit staff for the NHS in the Highlands we are more likely to keep them.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “As set out in our latest Programme for Government, we are developing proposals for a new medical school to ensure we have graduates with the skills the NHS of the future needs for a sustainable workforce.
“The health secretary is meeting a range of stakeholders as we take forward this important work.”