GP practice in Brookeborough and Tempo, County Fermanagh, becomes 13th to hand contract back to Deparment of Health in past year

Brookeborough and Tempo Primary Care Services in County Fermanagh currently cares for about 8000 patients.Issues affecting the practice include difficulties in attracting new doctors to the rural area, poor infrastructure and a lack of investment, the BBC reported.

However UUP MLA for the area Tom Elliott says GPs that he knows express the key problem in more simple terms.

"They are telling me they want to concentrate on providing medical services as opposed to running practices," he said.

He knows one GP who is content to keep managing their practice.

"But I think that for others it has just got to the stage where some people are saying: 'We don't like this bureaucracy and administration so we need other people to manage that. We just want to get on with providing medical care'.

It is understood that the cost of maintaining aging buildings can also be a burden to some practices. And it is understood that a significant proportion of GPs across NI have cut back to part time hours as they reassessed their quality of life after the pandemic. Another factor can be that GPs are operating more 'portfolio careers' where they take on other other responsibilities outside of a regular GP practices.

Dr Ursula Mason, Chair of the Royal College of GPs in Northern Ireland and a GP in Carryduff, gave her reaction to the news about the Brookeborough and Tempo GP.

"Decades of underinvestment in general practice combined with a failure to train enough GPs and unmanageable demand has left many burnt out GPs leaving the profession,” she said.

“Unable to recruit, GP surgeries are struggling to cope and therefore, it is unfortunately no surprise that many have made the difficult decision to hand back their contracts. We are in the midst of a crisis and it is important that there is urgent action from the Department of Health to secure the future of GP practices across Northern Ireland.

“While happening across Northern Ireland on an alarming scale, it is particularly troublesome in the South West with this being the second large Fermanagh practice at risk of closure.”

However the Department of Health responded that it has begun a process to develop alternative arrangements and said patients do not need to take any actions.

It said a £5.5m package for general practice was announced last September to strengthen services during the winter period.

It has also increased GP training places in NI to an all-time high of 121 in 2022/23 and has streamlined the application process for internationally qualified candidates.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people turned out to a demonstration outside Enniskillen Town Hall on Tuesday night to protest against the Western Trust’s handling of the suspension of services at the South West Acute Hospital.

Emergency general surgery was temporarily suspended at the hospital in November.

The trust said this was necessary to maintain protect the public's safety after problems recruiting and retaining enough doctors to maintain the service safely. It launched a public consultation on the plan last month. However campaigners have claimed that the trust has not tried hard enough to recruit and retain staff for the service.