Two become one: Bo'ness-based medical practices set to merge to create a new service

From Monday, October 2 Kinglass Medical Practice and Forth View Practice will combine to form Kinneil Medical Practice.

Dr Anne-Marie Crichton, Dr Victoria Spencer and Dr Iain Webster will continue their partnership roles within the new practice and will be joined by Dr Kerry Bartie and

Dr Rebecca Honeyman, who work currently at Kinglass, and Dr Rachael Mortimer who has started work at Forth View recently’ along with two new GPs - Dr Scott

McRitchie and Dr Gary Hughes, who will both be contributing one day a week.

A new advanced nurse practitioner has also been appointed to support the workload.

Both practices have been struggling with delivering services safely as a smaller unit and struggling to recruit new doctors into these smaller units.

A spokesperson for the new Kinneil Medical Practice said: “We recognise that small practices are not sustainable in the future and that by the two practices coming

together we can ensure we attract high quality GPs and staff to Kinneil Medical Practice enabling ongoing provision of medical services to the town.

"We want to avoid a situation where struggling practices are handed over to other GP providers. We will have to work out of both the Health Centre and Kinglass Centre

for the foreseeable future as funding for new premises has been put on hold by the Scottish Government.

"We do not have space on either site for the whole practice and will be working differently over the two sites, with the Kinglass Centre used for same day

appointments plus physio and mental health and Forth View covering routine appointments and prescription requests.

“The whole team at Kinneil are very excited about this change as we recognise we can restart delivering a better model of care than the two practices can currently offer. We will be looking at reviewing more conditions annually and providing more access for medication reviews as a starter.

“We recognise this will affect all patients and staff and we hope that we can all work effectively together to ensure a smooth transition.”

For more information visit the new practice website.