The Health Services White Paper : The Labour Party's policy
1944-09 1944 1940s 22 pages - 11 - The Labour Party considers that the conditions of work of the doctors should be the best possible. Forms, certificates, and returns should be kept to a minimum; and full clerical help should be available. No doctor should be supervised in his clinical work, once...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
September 1944
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/36392DEB-987C-4B97-8914-3CE339045CDE http://hdl.handle.net/10796/DD13085E-66B8-4BF4-9A91-817534D09E4F |
| Summary: | 1944-09
1944
1940s
22 pages
- 11 - The Labour Party considers that the conditions of work of the doctors should be the best possible. Forms, certificates, and returns should be kept to a minimum; and full clerical help should be available. No doctor should be supervised in his clinical work, once he has finished his assistantship. Doctors should have full freedom of speech, publication, and political association and action, in just the same way as teachers do. The conditions of pay of general practitioners. The acceptance of the principle of universality means that the possible ways, of paying the doctors are as follows:- (a) Capitation fees (b) Small basic salary plus capitation fees (c) Payment by items of work done (d) Salary Payment by items of work done can be dismissed at once. Accounting is incredibly complicated; and when the system was tried in the early days of N.H.I. it was found to lead to serious abuse in the form of unnecessary treatment. The White Paper proposes payment by capitation fee for doctors practising singly or in groups outside, health centres, with the option of salaries special case. For health centre doctors, it proposes salaries in view of the necessity of preventing competition for patients, which would destroy the spirit of the team. The Labour Party believes in the principle of a salaried service. Since, however, it believes that health centre practice with salaried medical staffs, will in due course supersede other forms of practice, it is prepared to accept the White Paper compromise proposals, provided there is no weakening of them. In view of the importance which it attaches to the salaried side of the service, the Labour Party lays down the following principles which should be observed within such a service if success is to be achieved, and if full medical co-operation (at least among the younger half of the profession) is to be assured:- (a) Salaries should be generous, so as to attract the best type of men and women to medicine. (b) They should increase rapidly in the first few years of practice (to encourage doctors to marry reasonably early), and thereafter more slowly. (c) There should be pension schemes for all doctors and their widows and dependents, and these should be transferable, so as not to discourage doctors from moving from one area to another. (d) The range of salary should not vary greatly between doctors whether engaged in general practice, specialist work, or administration. If the administrator gets more than the clinician we shall have good clinicians trying to turn into bed administrators. Each doctor should choose to do the work he can do best, regardless of financial considerations.
292/847/3/166 |
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |