The previously partnership-run High Street Surgery has been taken over by Dumfries and Galloway Health Board after the retiral and resignation of the three previous partners.
It is currently being staffed by three locum doctors, with hopes of a future merger with the town’s other surgery.
And weekly outreach surgeries offered in Crawford, Leadhills and Wanlockhead are set to be reduced to just Leadhills.
The centre has traditionally had three doctors but in January of last year, with only two doctors in post, one of them resigned.
Since then they have tried to recruit GPs but in almost two years have had not a single application.
In the latest twist, Dr Sonia Sharkey has retired from medicine, after running the practice on her own for over a year with the aid of locums.
A spokesman for the Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership this week said: “There are nationwide difficulties in recruiting GPs to practices, and there are an increasing number of practices that are unable to continue to provide services.
“Although this is a UK wide problem, it does seem to affect practices in rural areas more.
“The Health Board had hoped that we would be able to attract doctors to continue to run the practice as a partnership but we have not been successful.”
The health board took on the running of the practice from Monday, with the direct employment of all staff. Locums Dr Richard Crosby, Dr Stan Tervier and Dr Michael Scullion are in place while recruitment takes place for two permanent doctors.
The spokesman added: “The board’s medium-term plan is that we will return the practice to the traditional partnership/sub-contractor arrangement, and in the longer term, we hope to support the merger of the two Moffat practices.
“This will result in a larger, and more sustainable, practice that we believe will be more attractive when recruiting young doctors, and may enable a greater range of services to be provided to patients.”
Currently around 800 patients live in and around Crawford, Leadhills and Wanlockhead and twice weekly surgeries have taken place in all three villages, with patients travelling to Moffat if needed on other days.
However, it has now been proposed by the board that, due to the difficulty in staffing, they will now only offer services at Leadhills.
The spokesman added: “Access to small branch surgeries in rural Dumfries and Galloway and South Lanarkshire is changing in order to make the working of the practice more efficient and help with the recruiting of GP partners in the future.”
Households in Moffat have been written to and affected patients invited to drop-in sessions.
Speaking on the issue in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, South Scotland Labour MSP Colin Smyth said: “Through no fault of their own NHS Dumfries and Galloway is facing a real recruitment crisis in key medical staff from GPs to consultants.
“Scottish Government cuts in funding and in training places in the past have caused this crisis and now we can see it is impacting on local services which are at breaking point in many cases.”
