Cut fees upsetting doctors5 society

Press, 19 July 1983, Page 14

Cut fees upsetting doctors 5 society

PA Hamilton Patients might be billed by their doctors for accident compensation visits if a prices confrontation continues. The General Practitioner Society in its latest journal urges doctors to charge their patients and let them recover the fee from the Accident Compensation Corporation. The proposal comes as a response if the corporation continues to cut back fees “bulk charged” by doctors on behalf of their patients. “It may be a bit more trouble to each doctor, but

do not forget it will be a hell of a lot more trouble for the corporation, and more expensive,” the society says. The society cites recent instances of fee cutting by the corporation. In one, a Christmas Day charge of $l5 whs reduced to $lO, making a total fee of $l7 including the general medical service benefit. A charge for another Christmas Day attendance was cut from $25 to $l7, making a total fee of $22 including the general medical service benefit.

“If a radiographer in our

local hospital is called back on a Sunday — any Sunday, not even Christmas — she is entitled to a payment of $4B, and a laboratory technician in the same situation, $52.” They would also get travelling costs, the society says. “G.P.s simply cannot afford to allow decisions like these to pass unchallenged, and since it appears to be the policy of the corporation to pick off doctors in a random fashion, it may become necessary for the doctors to act in a united way to resist this type of pressure.”