DIRECT APPROACH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 99, 29 April 1939, Page 13

DIRECT APPROACH.

STATE AND DOCTORS. DISTRIBUTION OF CONTRACTS. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.) WELLING lON, Friday. "I am informed that it has been wrongly represented to a considerable number of medical practitioners that all undertaking had been given by the Government that thb present offer relating to maternity medical services is to be made through the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association," stated the Minister of Health, the Hon, P. Fraser, to-day. To remove any misapprehension on this pointy he had to state that the Government's proposal to invite doctors to enter into a contract of service in relation to maternity benefits had been specially discussed by Departmental officers with representatives of the British Medical Association.

"I am assured that it was fully appreciated and agreed that no purpose would bo served by using tho association as a medium for placing tho offei of contracts in the hands of the practitioners," tho MinUtor said. "Such an arrangement would, of courso, merely have amounted to the association's acting as a distributing agency for the Department. In tho circumstances, the Department Is undertaking the actual distribution of the formal offers. "In view of this fact, any assertion from representatives of the British Medical Association that the present documents are being circulated to practitioners without any further reference to the association would be redundant, and any possible complaint on this score would be wholly unwarranted. "I must repeat that I am assured that the Departmental officers are firmly of the opinion that the representatives of the British Medical Association fully understood the courso that was, to be followed in the issuing of the relevant documents," Mr. Fraser added, "and that they agreed that nothing was to bo gained by sending them to the individual doctors through the association." OTAGO REFUSAL. DIMKJT PAYMENT TO FATXBNT (By Teletraph.—Press Association.) DUNKDIN, Friday. Falling Into line with the motion adopted elsewhere, the Otago division of tlie British Medical Association has unanimously decided to decline to sign the official maternity contracts. A meeting of the division was in favour of a cash benefit being paid direot to the patient, leaving her free to make her own arrangements with her doctor. It was emphasised that in the meantime practitioners would continue to provide treatment as previously.