Doctors to be surveyed

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 42

Doctors to be surveyed

PA Wellington The running of doctors’ practices will be surveyed during the next three years. The Government has granted $300,000 over the next three years to the project, which is being run by the Royal College of General Practitioners. The chairman, Dr Derry Seddon, said about 100 practices would be surveyed at random.

Information would be collected about the age and sex of patients, income from the fees and subsidies and costs associated with running a practice, including rent, salaries and vehicle costs. The Minister of Health, Mr Caygill, said very little was known about general practice, patterns of service provision or the costs of running a practice. “Yet GPs provide about 12 million consultants a year. They write 25 million prescriptions and order millions of laboratory tests. "They also make decisions about referring patients to hospitals and private specialists, they manage maternity care and they are front-line providers of patient information and preventive care. “The absence of goodquality information makes it difficult to plan improvements in health service management,” he said.