34. Dr Miles Mack

The debonair outgoing chair of RCGP Scotland was praised by GP colleagues for ‘leading the push’ for better GP funding north of the border.

Dr Mack has contributed to the pressure exterted on the Scottish government, resulting in the pledge of an extra £500m for general practice in Scotland by 2020/21, bringing it to 11% of overall NHS funding.

When this was announced, at the SNP Party Conference, it was his favourite moment of the last year, Dr Mack says. He adds: ‘It has been RCGP Scotland which has consistently been calling for 11% of NHS Scotland funding since November 2013.

‘Unfortunately, initial euphoria was replaced with frustration when the Cabinet Secretary announced it would be £250 million “in direct support of general practice”.’

In the last year, leading up to his handover of the RCGP Scotland chairmanship to Dr Carey Lunan in November, Dr Mack has worked to ‘ensure the public is properly aware of the crisis in general practice in Scotland’. ‘Simply put, the truth must be told,’ he says.

The Dingwalls GP has also been instrumental in the work of bringing in the new alternative to QOF in Scotland, which he says has ‘the concept of peer-led, values-driven quality’, and has been vocal about the impact of Brexit on the GP and NHS workforce.

He hopes that he is ‘regarded as led by sound values’, because ‘values don’t change too readily and we ignore them at our peril’.

Why influential

Fundamental to improving conditions for practices in Scotland

What others say

‘Led RCGP Scotland’s push for better GP funding’

Random fact

Manages a small woodland