N.Z. Medical Services: Proposed Changes

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 April 1950, Page 4

N.Z. Medical Services: Proposed Changes

WELLINGTON, This Day (P.A.).—An explanation of important points in the medical services system under the Social Security Amendment Act was made yesterday by Dr J. O. Mercer, chairman of the council of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association. • Dr Mercer said that, in view of the statement published yesterday on the proposed changes in general medical services under the Act, there were several important points which should be made clear to all. “In the first place, the refund system of practice, whereby a medical practitioner is in no way dependent upon the State for his fees, will, as in the past, be used by all doctors who so desire, and there are some hundreds of these in New Zealand. Furthermore, there was nothing to prevent any doctor from continuing the use of the refund system or changing to this mode of practice in future, should he so wish - „ , . . “Secondly, the new system for which a commencing date has not yet been fixed, envisages that patients, wherever this is reasonable, will bear a proportion of the total fees charged by their doctors. The restoration of the civil right of a doctor to the use of the courts to recover his fees is viewed with great satisfaction by the profession, who have always regarded this deliberate exclusion as a barrier to the co-operation between the State and the profession which is so necessary for the maintenance of standards and of medical practice in any national scheme. “The British Medical Association has every confidence that co-operation with the Government is a firmly established fact and that this state of affairs will be maintained in the future,” he concluded.