Medical spokesmen welcome health plan

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34152, 13 May 1976, Page 8

Medical spokesmen welcome health plan

(N.Z. Press Associati WELLINGTON. The announcement by the Minister of Health (Mr Gill) that the Government intends to expand community health care has been welcomed by doctor and nurse, organisations. Mr Gill said that the Government saw two priorities in the health field — the expansion of community care and the granting of wider responsibilities to hospital boards, especially in community health.

His comments were like a “pleasant breeze blowing away the clouds of confusion created by Labour’s White Paper on Health in 1975.” the chairman of the Medical Association, (Dr W J. Treadwell) said. It was unfortunate that there was “a chill of economic reality in the wind,” but at least the changes acknowledged that the

people and the community were more important than “unwieldy administration’.’ “We’ve been pleased to note the manner in which the Minister has sh' wn the need for community chre and services such as the extension of the practice nurse scheme to allow domiciliary care,” he said. Such a move would help take the pressure off hospital beds, particularly geriatric beds. It would also ease the pressure on the casualty departments at hospitals. Dr Treadwell said the health service could only progress if the various branches of nursing worked as a team „with the medical profession, especially in community care. The development of community nursing was also welcomed by the Nurses Association. Its executive director, (Miss Shona Carey) said there was a great need for the scheme. In Wellington, the director of the Community

Domiciliary Nursing Trust, (Sister Marion Cooper) said Mr Gill’s comments were the best she had heard for a long time. “A lot of people have been institutionalised for the lack of a few hours help a day,” she said. Sister Cooper said her group, acting as a private nursing agency with about 100 part-time nurses, was keeping about 20 persons out of hospitals a week. But because they had to charge for their service many people were forced to go to hospital because they could not afford home help. She had been trying to get the Government to introduce wider community nursing for years, she said. However,. Mr Gill’s comments will not mean an instant introduction of the scheme or instant changes in other areas of the health service. Mr Gill said he had talked frankly of his hopes for the health service so that the committee could establish what its job would be.