NHS chiefs are pleading with doctors to come out of retirement to ease the GP crisis.
In Tayside and Fife, a shrinking pool of family doctors is caring for rising numbers of patients, according to official figures.
The Primary Care Workforce Survey reveals an escalating GP recruitment crisis across Scotland made worse by an ageing population increasingly reliant on primary care.
The Scottish Government is backing a scheme in which health boards build up a register of retired GPs to plug the gaps.
But opposition parties accused the SNP of allowing the crisis to deepen through workforce planning failures.
Liz Smith, the Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, said: “The SNP has been in charge of health for almost a decade and these figures highlight the depth of problems under their watch.
“There are clearly issues with workforce planning and Scotland’s ageing and increasing population will only add to this problem.”
The number of GPs fell in every local authority in Tayside and Fife over the past year despite longer patient lists across the board.
Across the region, family doctor numbers dropped by 4% on the previous year to 644 in 2015, the survey found.
The decrease in GP numbers was 8% in Angus, 4% in Dundee, 2% in Fife and 5% in Perth and Kinross.
Patient numbers have gone up from 803, 742 in 2014 to 805,117 last year.
Scottish Labour’s health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: “All across Scotland families are losing out because there aren’t enough doctors available. That’s simply not good enough.”
Alex Cole-Hamilton, the Scottish Liberal Democrat’s health spokesman, said SNP minsters have not acted despite being told “time and time again that we face a crisis in primary care services”.
As well as a pool of retired GPs in NHS Lothian, development fellow posts have been created nationwide, which are designed in part to keep family doctors in general practice.
Shona Robison, the health secretary, said £2 million is being dedicated to recruit and retain GPs over the next two years.
“As the Primary Care Workforce Survey published today shows, there still remain challenges in recruiting and retaining doctors to work in general practice,” she said.
“While Scotland continues to have the highest number of GPs per patient in the UK, we still need to act now to redesign the way care is provided in the community to ensure these services are sustainable in the future.”
Dr Alan McDevitt, from the British Medical Association, said the £2m of extra funding Ms Robison announced today is “nowhere near sufficient to make an impact on the problems facing general practice”.
