BMA Scotland chair calls for urgent action to address shortfall of rural GPs

Dr Iain Kennedy, a GP from Inverness and the chair of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said urgent action was needed to reverse the crisis. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The leader of Scotland’s doctors has called for rural GPs to get higher pay and special status to cope with a critical shortfall of medics in the Highlands, islands and rural counties.

Dr Iain Kennedy, the chair of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said urgent action was needed to reverse a crisis with doctors quitting rural practices in growing numbers, which had left many remote areas dependent on locum GPs who are paid £900 a day.