"SWEATING " THE DOCTORS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5655, 28 August 1896, Page 5 (Supplement)

" SWEATING " THE DOCTORS.

On the plea of "saving tho rates, " the Poor Law Guardians in some parts of England do not hesitate to grind the face of the poor by prac tising the meanest sort of economies. We should be sorry if the administrators of charitable aid in New Zealand were to descend to similar methods, and were to shape their policy more to suit the pockets of the ratepayers than to satisfy the claims of humanity. Yet we fear that the Charitable Aid Board of this district has embarked on such a questionable course by its resolution to reduce the salary of its medical officer to £150 a year. Possibly the sum of £300, at which the salary was once fixed, was rather extravagarft ; but no adequate reason has been adduced for a reduction to half that amount. We understand •that the doctor's work has grown of late years, and that he has on an average to pay ten or a dozen visits daily to the Board's patients. The salary which it is proposed to pay the medical officer is, therefore, at the rate of about tenpence per visit— a figure which we have no hesitation in describing as a " sweating " one. If the doctors had a trade union, or were as unanimous in their views regarding fees as they are, for example, on the subject of advertising, they might checkmate the Charitable Aid Board by refusing to undertake the work at less than say eighteenperice or half a crown a visit ; bufc owing to the lack of union there is every likelihood that the Board will be able t» get a doctor even at the reducea salcry. The law of supply and demand and free competition, so dear to • the old school of economists, will doubtless be urged as justification for the Board's action. But we appeal to the higher law of humanity, and urge upon the Board the desirableness of reconsidering this question, in accordance with the very reasonable request of the local branch of the Medical Association. Our law amis at securing medical attendance for a class of patients who are most in need of careful and sympathetic treatment, and it is absurd to expect the best attention for tenpence a visit. To cut down unduly the salary of the medical officer is to invite careless work and to drive the position into the hands of an inexperienced and perhaps inferior practitioner. We do not for an instant suppose that those who contribute to the charitable aid rate approve of cheeseparing economy in such a matter as this. For the sake of a few pence a year no ratepayer would wish to subject the sick poor to the risks involved in this reduction of salary. No one, of course, maintains that the Board's doctor should receive full fees for charitable patients — he runs no risks of loss from bad debts — but, in the interests of the sick poor, the value of a visit to them should be assessed a little higher than one third of the fee charged to the poorest class of paying patients-by the keenest competing doctors. We trust to find the Charitable Aid Board reconsidering this matter and agreeing to coutinue the salary at £200 a year.