AN OVERHAUL NEEDED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 135, 5 December 1944, Page 4

AN OVERHAUL NEEDED

Comment made by the "Lancet," the British medical journal, regarding the operation of the. general practitioner service under the social security scheme draws attention to the need for a complete overhaul of the present system. The plan operating now is really a- patchwork compromise between what the British Medical Association considered to be in the best interests of national health and the. Government's determination to make good its undertaking to provide the people with a free-for-all service, and it has ; been in existence long enough for its weaknesses to become apparent. The main difficulty was well stated by the "Lancet" when it said that "New Zealand will some day have tt find a solution to a problem which we have failed to solve here—how to reward the . able, conscientious doctor who may make fewer but more useful I attendances than his less efficient and less scrupulous colleagues." ; Whether it is true or not that some general practitioners are, as has been stated, making up to £10,000 a year, the fact remains that under the present system it is open for doctors who are so inclined to see as many patients as can be crowded into their working hours. This obviously is not in the best interests of the people's health.

The president of the Auckland branch of the British Medical Association (Dr. McMurray Cole), in a reference to the comment in the "Lancet," has frankly admitted that, on the face

of it, the doctors, from a purely financial point of view, are doing better on the existing scheme than they would do on the one favoured by them, but even so the majority do not like it. They j would prefer a system by which a [patient would pay some small fee, which would tend to check unnecessary visitation and yet not put up a barrier against any person needing attention. That appears to be the main problem to be solved, and the best approach to it would be for the Government and representatives of the doctors to get together in a reasonable and commonsense way and try to arrive at a scheme which, while assuring the best possible service to all, would eliminate abuses. When attention was recently drawn to the high incomes allegedly being earned by some practitioners, it was stated that the greater part of the fees found their way back to the State in excess profits taxation. This is quite true, especially in the case of practitioners who were earning moderate incomes prior to the war, but it should not be used as a justification for abuses. Whatever scheme is adopted, the main consideration must be the health of the people, and closely wrapped up with that is the welfare of the medical profession itself.