'OVERWHELMED' Inverclyde GP practices have been forced to close their doors to new patients in the wake of a recent influx of foreign nationals and asylum seekers, a top level health meeting has been told.

More than half of the district's surgeries - seven out of a total of 13 - are having to turn people away as a result of a 'perfect storm' of dealing with the new arrivals and existing systemic problems within the crisis-hit service, the Integration Joint Board (IJB) has heard.

A report compiled by Inverclyde Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) chief officer Kate Rocks points to an increase in asylum seeker registrations and foreign nationals with student visas arriving in the district, as well as ongoing workload and recruitment issues for GPs.

Now, in an unprecedented move, the HSCP has stepped in to allow doctors to suspend patient registrations until pressures on workloads and staffing problems can be brought under control.

Ms Rocks told the IJB - responsible for planning and operational management of services - that the arrival of asylum seekers alone is not the reason for the exceptional course of action taken.

The chief officer said: "I want to be clear it is a wider issue than just asylum seekers and foreign nationals and more representative of the system as a whole.

"We have a greater footprint for foreign nationals coming in per head of population in Inverclyde.

"But that in itself is not causing the difficulties."

Concerned IJB member Councillor Martin McCluskey warned that the situation exposes a lack of resilience in primary care and declared it was a result of Inverclyde being 'short changed'.

Mr McCluskey said: "This opens up a whole host of issues, firstly it is a worrying development that GPs have had to close practices given that we know about the workload pressures for GPs and dentist practices.

"So it does raise questions about the access in Inverclyde to primary care more generally.

"Why have the lists have become overwhelmed in some areas? The [report] paper talks about asylum seekers and foreign nationals.

"But the pressures on the system before we had that pressure were already significant, hence the result of a number of factors including poor workforce planning that has led to us having a shortage here and across the country.

"I have personally argued for years, and I know others round the table have too, that Inverclyde has been short changed in terms of health services locally.

Councillor McCluskey went on to raise the point that this will impact on the need to reverse population decline in Inverclyde.

He said: "What we are reading here is that, with a relatively small number of people arriving in the area, it has become overwhelmed. It raises questions to me about sustainability.

"We need to repopulate but how do we repopulate if our health services become so overwhelmed we can't cope with a relatively small number of arrivals?"

Clinical director Dr Hector Macdonald - who has warned for years about acute GP shortages in Inverclyde - says they have been hit by a 'perfect storm' with new registrations in a short space of time as well as GP ill health, retirements and long standing recruitment problems.

Dr Hector Macdonald said: "There were significant pressures on practices dating back for sometime.

"We are keen to support the practices through this and get out of this situation.

"It is important to stress the key message is there will still be a GP for everyone."

Dr Macdonald said that the size of Inverclyde means that when new people arrive there are only a small number of practices to share the workload.

HSCP chief officer Ms Rocks says that when the GPs open up their lists again the HSCP will look at ways to better support them to make sure that there is improved access to primary care health services.

She added: "We want to welcome people to Inverclyde and part of welcoming people to Inverclyde is making sure they have basic access to primary care services.

"That is something we want to talk to GPs about when they start opening up GP lists again, about how better we can support them by doing things and do things a bit differently from what we did in the past."

At the meeting the health and social care chiefs made it clear that it is only new patient registrations that are closed and surgeries are continuing as normal.

Members of the board were told that lists back open up in the next couple of months with the remaining six practices taking on any new patients for the time being.