Scottish GPC chair Dr Alan McDevitt was selected by our panel for ‘skilfully’ negotiating a contract this year that avoided most of the pitfalls seen in England and secured £6m of additional investment for general practice.
He has also broken away from the UK contract, negotiating a three-year deal with the Scottish government that sees no changes to QOF until 2017.
The Clydebank GP’s achievement could be down to his ‘persuasive use of common sense’ or ‘ability to use pragmatism to good effect’ – both qualities highlighted by our panel.
Either way Dr McDevitt says he plans to use his ‘new and sustained dialogue’ with Scottish health boards, to further ‘make the case’ for general practice and push for solutions to recruitment and retention problems.
He says: ‘Over the next year, we’ll be trying to stabilise the situation so that practices can at least know where they stand in terms of funding, and trying to find ways to deal with demand and workload pressures.
‘We’ll have to do something about recruitment and retention, and we’re in talks with Scottish Government at the moment.’
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