FEARS are growing for the future of the service that people in Ludlow and south Shropshire can use when they need a doctor and their GP surgery is closed.

Shropdoc, the highly rated service that provides an out of hours’ medical lifeline to tens of thousands of people, is facing a financial crisis.

Attempts are being made to negotiate new contracts and changes have been made including redundancies but in a letter sent to all GPs, Dr Russell Muirhead, the chairman of Shropdoc makes the seriousness of the situation all too clear.

He states that the service is spending more than it is making and this is not sustainable.

“The current financial challenges are the most serious Shropdoc has faced in its 21-year history and cannot be underestimated,” says Dr Russell Muirhead in his letter that was sent on Tuesday, August 8.

He says that changes have been made but that these are not enough.

“We have been aware of increasing issues for the past 12 months but the more serious impact only became apparent in late February.

“Since then we have been working very hard to understand the full detail of the position, develop a Financial Recovery Plan and alerted our commissioners in May.

“The initial financial recovery plan involved the loss of some members of staff and it is unfortunate that we lose good people from the organisation but we have had to make difficult decisions for our long-term sustainability.

“While all of the changes we have put in place help with this, it is now clear from the latest information that more is required to close the gap between our income and expenditure.

“The reasons for this position are multiple and are contributing to a significant challenge which is being met in a number of ways.”

Shropdoc is a not for profit company, limited by guarantee.

Established in 1996 it was organised and governed by GPs for the purpose of providing medically necessary care to the population of Shropshire and surrounding counties out-of-hours on behalf of its members.

It has 270 GP members comprising general practitioners from Shropshire and Powys, with a smaller number from adjacent clinical commissioning group areas and more than 270 members of staff working in a wide variety of roles.

Dr Muirhead said that a number of jobs have been lost so far in a bid to make the service viable.

“We have been through a difficult period identifying those roles which are not essential to our core business and unfortunately we have had to make some roles redundant and in some instances amend working hours,” added Russell Muirhead.

Ian Winstanley, the Shropdoc Chief Executive Officer, has left the organisation and a replacement is being sought.

Shropdoc has been rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission.

Peter Corfield, the Ludlow health campaigner and chairman of the Ludlow Hospital League of Friends has been a strong supporter of Shropdoc.

"We’ve got a brilliant GP Out of Hours service in Shropshire, far better than most areas," said Gill George, Ludlow-based leader of ‘Defend our NHS in Shropshire’.

"It’s a local service, run by GPs who know our area, and that’s important. There’s a huge risk of it being replaced by an anonymous call centre in Dudley, run by Care UK.

"Shropdoc’s been struggling to recruit GPs. Their regular workload is massive, and it’s also financially just not worth their while to work additional hours for Shropdoc on current Shropdoc pay rates.

"The doctors who stick with Shropdoc are doing it out of commitment to patients. This is one reason it’s so important to sort out proper financing of Shropdoc – but we’re now in an incredibly serious and very urgent situation.

"Shropdoc is actually doing the right thing by saying “This isn’t working, we can’t provide decent care on the cheap”. Maybe what we need now is for NHS leaders at the Clinical Commissioning Group and the Community Trust to do the same.

"It’s time for them to go back to local MPs and to NHS England and remind them that Shropshire gets one of the lowest NHS funding allocations in the country.

"Philip Dunne’s a Health Minister, for goodness sake, with direct responsibility for NHS funding – and yet we’re about to lose the Shropdoc GP Out of Hours service and our Community Hospital beds because the local NHS can’t afford to pay for them.

"This is incredibly serious for people in Ludlow, and across rural Shropshire."