U.S. doctor surplus

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 7

U.S. doctor surplus

The United States will have 70,000 doctors too many by the year 1990, according to an American expert in health manpower and systems planning, Dr Thomas Hall. Dr Hall is in New Zealand as a consultant to the health services manpower planning workshop being held in Rotorua this month. The United States had estimated how many doctors were needed, but the problem in implementing any plans was the size of the country and the structure of the system of government.

New Zealand did not have the “cat and dog fights” that troubled the United States, he said. The common interest of public health held the health services together.

Dr Hall was in New Zealand in 1976 for the first of

the - manpower piaumug workshops. "I am very pleased to see what this country has been doing since then,” he said. More good, relevant information on the numbers employed and trained for health’services had been collected. The aim of the workshops was to bring together groups in the health service, such as doctors and nurses, and work out how many people were needed, and where. As a result of the workshops, the number of medical students trained in New Zealand was dropped 25 per cent, to avoid an oversupply, Dr Hall said. If an oversupply occurred about 30 to 35 per cent of those trained were lost to overseas countries. Cuts in numbers and the

idux ui joos elsewhere helped to stop this, but the cost of training was too much to be lost overseas.

Dr Hall said that the role of a consultant from the United States in these proceedings was to relate experiences from another country, and to help by giving ideas. The director of the Health Department’s management services and research unit. Dr George Salmond, said that unless staffing problems were solved co-operatively through the workshops, they would probably end in industrial disputes. If this happened, all would suffer, he said. Plans had to be made for the numbers to be trained since the Government was limiting the growth in spending for health services, and could no longer afford to train excess staff.