Merger of hospitals proposed by Minister

Press, 9 March 1987, Page 1

Merger of hospitals proposed by Minister

PA Rotorua Public and private hospitals should be combined into a national hospital service, says the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Tapsell.

This would help cut waiting lists for treatment, he said yesterday. Fdrming a national hospital service was the main point proposed by Mr ’Tapsell in an address to the Urological Society of Australasia at Rotorua. Emphasising that the views were personal, and did not represent Government policy, Mr Tapsell said the persistence of the dual public and private system was a “bar to real progress.”

The Minister, who is a surgeon with 27 years experience, said combination of hospitals was the answer.

“The Government would buy from willing sellers the shareholding in private hospitals,” he said.

“No private hospital would be compelled to join but it must be made clear that any hospital remaining outside the service would not get any form of subsidy.”

Under the new service the contracts of all

specialists would be renegotiated and appointment of part-time work based on a system of tenths would be abolished.

Most specialists now work part of their time in public and part in private. They are paid in a system of tenths of a full-time salary.

“No specialist should be compelled to join the service and may, if they wish, work outside the service in a purely private capacity,” Mr Tapsell said.

A postmaster would not be permitted to run a private post office on the next corner, and a radiologist should not be permitted to control the radiological department of a public hospital and at the same time own and control private rooms outside the gates. Specialists should have the option of being paid either by salary or by fee, but not both, Mr Tapsell maintained.

“The fee for any particular service could be

negotiated between the medical profession and the Government in much the same way as accident compensation or Southern Cross medical insurance fees are set now,” he said. “Major hospitals would be used for major cases and smaller hospitals would be much more efficiently used. I have no doubt waiting lists would be rapidly diminished,” he said. Funding for the moves would be decided at three-yearly or fiveyearly intervals. “Development of area health boards with responsibility for both hospital and community health care has been a step in the right direction, but I believe that the broad framework of priorities will need to be developed at a national level. “Otherwise the vagaries of local politics will see plans developed and abandoned at three-year intervals,” he said.