Doctors ‘will desert general practice’

Press, 30 December 1985, Page 7

Doctors ‘will desert general practice’

PA Auckland Doctors will desert general practice after big pay rises for hospital house surgeons and specialists, the Medical Association’s Auckland president predicts. Dr Michael Cooper said family doctor incomes would have to double in four years to stop the drain. Doctors would not want the risks and pressures of general practice when they could earn the same amount in the security of the Public Service.

“The only solution is for G.P.S to start charging dramatically more,” he said. “The entire country has to get medical insurance. ..There is no other 1 t

He said better hospital incomes and shorter hours for house surgeons would attract more young doctors into specialist training programmes instead of general practice. Some doctors already in general practice were likely to be lured back to hospital service.

Those who wanted general practice would go to Australia, he predicted.

The association hired a firm of chartered accountants to report on the fee structure. It said the profession would-face an increasing G.P. exodus if fees were not increased substantially. Dr Cooper said fees were half what they should be to provide the best sqrgery

facilities, maintain doctor competence, and allow for study leave and superannuation.

Doctors, were unlikely to demand big fee increases abruptly, he said. “They are not aggressive people.” The General Practitioner Society journal said just as family medicine was about to benefit from the longpromised “doctor boom” the new hospital pay rates made it unlikely young doctors would be tempted into family care. “The big difference now is that house surgeons will be paid fbr their hours on call, while ‘on call’ for G.P.s is mainly a social service with little or no financial return.” . .