The Transition to a State Medical Service
1942-08 1942 1940s 8 pages W.12. AUGUST, 1942. THE TRANSITION TO A STATE MEDICAL SERVICE MEMORANDUM BY THE MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS' UNION This is no matter for any one class, for doctors or civil servants or politicians, this building of a new system which shall ensure to our people the goo...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
August 1942
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/CF382CD9-BC21-4637-A65B-64199169224C http://hdl.handle.net/10796/0D7D2F2E-D3EC-45C7-9B5E-ABBC29EA5386 |
| Summary: | 1942-08
1942
1940s
8 pages
W.12. AUGUST, 1942. THE TRANSITION TO A STATE MEDICAL SERVICE MEMORANDUM BY THE MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS' UNION This is no matter for any one class, for doctors or civil servants or politicians, this building of a new system which shall ensure to our people the good health needed for full enjoyment of their work and play. It is a question for those with ideals, in whatever walk of life they may chance to be, and for all those who decline to be any longer fettered by the comforts and customs of old systems. The limited objectives and creaking machinery of our public health services must be replaced by a new outlook and new methods. It is in this belief that the Union puts forward its own contribution to the plans of the new building. (A) INTRODUCTION (1) We all know that there are many persons and bodies engaged in planning our future medical services. They do not differ in their ultimate aim, which is that the utmost advantages which science can suggest, or administration provide, for the maintenance of public health and the cure of disease shall be available to every citizen whatever his means or position. The difference between the various plans which are now being propounded is one of machinery. This is a subject to which the medical profession has given no very great attention, an error of omission which it must now remedy if it is not to run a serious risk of becoming the prey of political interests. This memorandum is, therefore, largely concerned with a new machinery for health administration and with the steps necessary to ensure a smooth transition to this new administration. (2) The proposals put forward by the Union need to be studied in the light of suggestions by others intended to serve the same purpose but differing in many essentials. We accordingly set out a few details of some of the alternative plans. (a) A considerable body of opinion, disgusted with the parochialism inseparable from the multiplicity of our existing local authorities, seeks to set up new regional authorities for all purposes of local government. The health services would be transferred to these new bodies, but this plan does not appear to suggest that the general lines of their administration would be much altered. (b) A few holders of extreme doctrinaire views would abolish general practitioner service and voluntary hospitals in favour of the type of service now given by the clinic, the health visitor, and the Municipal hospital. The holders of these views also appear to be in favour of larger health areas. (c) In the medical profession, especially amongst the senior and specialist branches, there is a feeling that a complete system of State service would so stifle initiative and obliterate competition that the public would eventually have a service worse than the present. The holders of these views favour some sort of amalgamation by which the State would pay a salary in respect of work amongst contributory classes, but the practitioner would supplement his income by private practice of existing type. General practitioner clinics are considered essential. It has not been made quite clear what administrative arrangements are deemed most suitable for this compromise plan. (d) Many people desire to see a national service administered through the existing local authorities and as nearly as possible on the lines of National Health Insurance. (3) In all these plans, the Union finds too much tendency to advocate half measures or too great a failure to realise that preventive medicine is becoming much too comprehensive in scope and universal in application to be successfully administered by any existing bodies. The Union's plan makes no pretence of stopping at half-way houses, where personal services are concerned, nor does it desire to see public health continue as a mere section of the interests of local authorities. It proposes new administrative bodies, for health purposes alone, and a wholesale amalgamation under State control of the existing services. This does not mean that it is opposed on principle to new administrative bodies or areas for other purposes. These do not fall within the scope of the memorandum. (B) CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION (4) Here the essential feature is a specialised Ministry of Health. The existing Ministry is merely the old Local Government Board masquerading under the new name which was given to it after the war of 1914-1918. It deals with all sorts of environmental services, and the Minister is obliged to spend much of his time on such matters as Housing, Town Planning, Sanitation, etc., so 1
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |