Benefit plan for chiropody

Press, 24 August 1977, Page 13

Benefit plan for chiropody

PA Wellington A meeting will be held on September 14 between representatives of the New Zealand Society of Chiropodists, the Medical Association, the Hospital Board’s Association and the Department of Health to discuss ways of implementing a chiropody benefit. Opening the annual conference of the Society of Chiropodists in Auckland the Minister of Health (Mr Gill) said that the form of chiropody benefit decided upon would have to be community orientated in its application. Mr Gill said that the two extreme forms the scheme could take would be in the context of a totally hospital based service of a fee-for-service system from private practitioners supported by a patient benefit. The answer had to be

found somewhere in between as neither approach was suitable to the Government.

The Minister said that a stumbling block to introducing the scheme promised in the National Party’s 1975 election manifesto had been a lack of information.

In a survey made in April last year, 192 chiropodists were contacted of whom 155 were practising, He said that many respondents were engaged in the work part-time and that there were 101 people employed full-time. Three-quarters of the practising chiropodists who responded to the survey were trained overseas. There had been only 23 graduates from the Central Institute of Technology in the six years since the chiropody course had started and more should be trained in New Zealand, he said.