FULL HOSPITAL SERVICES

Southland Times, Issue 23840, 10 June 1939, Page 8

FULL HOSPITAL SERVICES

Maternity Benefits Scheme 45 CASES IN OTAGO AND SOUTHLAND In the little more than three weeks since the maternity benefits became operative under the Social Security Act, 45 cases in the Otago and Southland medical districts have been paid for by the Health Department, which looks after this section of benefits, the sum involved being £287. Payments made up to the present time are principally for confinement and hospital attention, for there are only four doctors, two in Dunedin, one in Alexandra and one in Heriot who have entered into the contract with the Government. The women concerned contract to enter a given hospital, which in turn advises the Health Department. The hospital is allowed a certain fee for confinements and so much a day for two weeks—£ll in all—and at the end of this period the account is forwarded to the Health Department, which meets it within the month. In those hospitals, where a doctor is in attendance, as at the Queen Mary Hospital, the scheme automatically allows for a fee to the hospital board apart altogether from the hospital maintenance and confinement charges (says The Evening Star, Dunedin). The doctor’s fee also is paid in other cases where the doctor has agreed to enter the scheme. That the scheme is running along very smoothly-is the opinion expressed by the district medical officer of health (Dr T. McKibbin), who outlined the operations of it to a reporter yesterday. The costs attendant upon the hospital side of confinements were now completely free, he said, and payments made under that side of the national insurance scheme would progressively increase as time went on, as births were at the rate of about eight a week, or between 17 or 18 a thousand. A qualified midwife also is paid to attend confinements in a patient’s home, and for this service receives a fee of £2, plus 13/- a day for 14 days, if she lives on the patient’s premises; a maternity nurse receives £1 as a fee, plus the 13/- daily. In the latter case, however, a doctor has to be in attendance.