Maternity Benefits Amendments

Northern Advocate, 21 July 1939, Page 6

Maternity Benefits Amendments

[Per Press Association. Copyright.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Notice is contained in yesterday’s Gazette of an amendment to Clause 18 of the Maternity Benefits Regulations, deleting the requirement that the patient, except in case of emergency, should endeavour to refrain from summoning the maternity benefit medical practitioner to visit her during the night hours or on holidays. The Minister of Health, the Hon. P. Fraser, said the original provision was inserted for the purpose of protecting medical practitioners from possible unreasonable demands for unnecessary attention. Unnecessary Alarm. Further consideration of the matter, including consultations with doctors engaged in the administration of maternity benefit, showed that the possibility of their being unduly harassed was not likely to develop, while, on the other hand, there was a. danger that the provision might give rise to unnecessary fears on the part of patients, who might refrain from calling a doctor when a visit was necessary.

Additional maternity benefits regulations have been made in respect of maternity cases which, owing to some actual or suspected abnormal condition, cannot be effectively cared for in a maternity hospital, have to be admitted or transferred to a medical and surgical hospital. The former provisions with respect to maternity benefits did not permit of the payment of benefits in cases of this kind, and it is to overcome the anomaly that the prevision is now made enabling payment of maternity benefits to be made in respect of hospital treatment in these exceptional cases.