TRANSFER OF PATIENTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20625, 28 November 1941, Page 4

TRANSFER OF PATIENTS

LISTS OF DOCTORS APPEAL CASE QUERY (Per Press Association.) INVERCARGILL, this day. The question of patients having legal rights of transfer from the lists of any of the doctors who operated the original social security medical benefits scheme was raised at a sitting of the Armed Forces Appeal Board yesterday during the hearing of an appeal for exemption from service on behalf of Dr. Athol Ewan McMillan, of Invercargill. The appeal, which had been adjourned from the previous sitting of the board, was again adjourned pending a ruling from the Minister of Health. An appeal was made by the Hotel Workers’ Union, the Invercargill branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants of New Zealand, David Harris, union secretary, the central branch of the New Zealand Labur Party and Peter Hennessey. The chairman, Mr. J. R. Bartholomew, S.M., quoted a newspaper report of a statement by the department and said that apparently those patients under the original capitation scheme of 15s a year for each patient were not eligible for the new scheme. The original scheme seemed to be the limit of their rights, which meant that those patients could have recourse only to that one doctor except in an emergency.

Mr. A. N. Haggit, for the Crown: They can resign. “We should have something authoritative before us,” said Mr. Bartholomew. ,<

Counsel- for the appellants, Mr. Gordon J. Reed, said he would send a telegram to the Minister.