CO-OPERATION IN HEALTH SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1937, Page 10

CO-OPERATION IN HEALTH SERVICE

Whether it is justified or not only a consensus of the niedical profession could decide, but. there is a widespread feeling among lay members of the community that the general health of the people of New Zealand is not all that it might or should be in the present stage of medical science. The overcrowding of hospitals and the demand for elaborate and costly extensions to their accommodation and equipment seem to be out of proportion to the natural increase in population and indicative of something like a degree of deterioration in the physical condition Gf the people. For ihis stale of affairs, so far as it can be shown to exist, the medical profession itself is in no way to blame. The president (Mr. T. D. M. Stout) in his inaugural address at the opening of the biennial conference last night, claimed that "We have in New Zealand today a medical profession more highly trained and more experienced than any similar body of professional men in any part of the world." The special difficulties of medical practice in New Zealand and its failure to produce "a service that was requisite lo the community" were explained by Mr. Stout, who then proceeded lo outline a scheme of improvements and reforms which, we believe, will appeal lo the body of citizens concerned as eminently wise and practicable and to the medical profession as preserving the independence which is its breath of life. The first suggestion is to niake provision, under the promised national health insurance scheme, for those who are otherwise unable to make provision for medical treat-

ment. This will include those for whom the community will have to pay their insurance premium either in full or in part. Next is the provision of intermediate hospital beds for those unable to pay private hospital fees and yet Avilling and able to pay for their hospital and medical'attention. Thirdly, there is the provision of community hospitals to enable all classes wishing to do so to obtain treatment at our general hospitals by paying for their accommodation and arranging for their medical treatment by the practitioners of their choice. Furthermore, the president urged the profession "to do all it can to help the rest of the community, and especially the general and local government bodies, to elucidate and to solve our common difficulties. ... It should be very easy for our advice both to be sought and given." The greatest improvement could be made, according to Mr. Stout, in administration, and with this most people will agree. There is, indeed,.as he says, "every reason why all health activities should be co-ordinated and controlled by a central health authority . . . with medical men of the highest qualifications and experience . . . to develop the service from the point of view of efficiency in scientific medicine. . . . No multiplicity of administrative bodies should be permitted and no parochialism allowed to arise." These are indeed the plague of the present system. The president concluded by urging the Government and the country to "lake the opportunity afforded by the introduction of a national health insurance scheme to brinw about a reorganisation of the central and local administration of the health services of the community" on the lines suggested as an evolutionary process. The suggestions, which, no doubt, command the support of the medical profession, should be helpful and valuable to the Minister of Health in the task before him of reorganising the health service of the country.