National health insurance : explanatory statement as to medical benefit as affecting medical practitioners / presented to Parliament by command of His Majesty.

Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: National health insurance : explanatory statement as to medical benefit as affecting medical practitioners / presented to Parliament by command of His Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    5/18 (page 3)
    O Deputies, including partners or assistants. 11. A doctor on tlie panel will be required to give personal :attendance to tbe insured persons under bis care unless be is pre- vented from so doing by absence from borne, illness or other reasonable cause. Wben unable personally to attend be may employ any other practitioner (whether on tbe panel or not) to attend on bis behalf. A partner, an assistant, or a locum tenens ” may act as such deputy. Practitioners practising in partnership may, if they desire, have tbe fact of tbe partnership indicated in tbe published list of practitioners on tbe panel, so that an insured person may, in effect, select tbe firm as bis medical attendants. Duties of Doctors. 12. Tbe medical services to which an insured person is en- titled as Medical Benefit, and which the practitioner on tbe panel will therefore be under obligation, under bis agreement with tbe Insurance Committee, to render, are such as are ordinarily ren- dered by a general practitioner to bis patients in private practice; not such as may be rendered by a practitioner who happens to have acquired special skill in any particular branch of practice, but such as any ordinary general practitioner may reasonably be •expected to be competent to perform. Having regard to tbe im- portance of this matter it is well to quote the statement made with regard to it in tbe Memorandum sent by tbe Chancellor of tbe Exchequer to the British Medical Association on December 3rd, 1912: — Every practitioner acting on a panel will be required to enter into an agreement with the Insurance Committee, containing the provisions, stated in the First Schedule to the Regulations. It is there laid down that the treatment which the practitioner, by entering into the agreement, undertakes to give to insured persons under his care shall be that which can, consistently with the best interests of the patient, properly be undertaken by practitioners of ordinary professional competence and skill. This does not mean what can be expected from the individual practitioner who happens to be treating any particular case, but what can ordinarily be expected from a member of the group to which that practitioner belongs. It is believed that this definition will enable practitioners on the panels at • once to decide, in the enormous majority of cases, whether any particular service which they are asked to render falls within the scope of those which they have undertaken by their agreement with the Committee. The practitioner would •obviously not consider it to the interest of the patient that an operation requiring special surgical skill should be undertaken (unless as a matter of urgency) by a practitioner who does not possess that skill, his professional duty to his patient will preclude him in such a case from undertaking the operation, and it, therefore, would not be incumbent upon him under his agreement. On the other hand, circumstances arise in which in ordinary practice it would be the duty of a general practitioner to his patient to perform an operation, on account of the urgency of the case, rather than incur the risk of possible injury to the patient, through delay or through removal, which might be entailed in obtaining the assistance of a person of special skill. If such an emergency occurs in the case of an insured person, and if the practitioner responsible for the care of that patient decides that it is his duty to his patient, in view of the urgency of the case, to operate, the operation in that case would fall within the services which he has undertaken to render under his agreement with the Insurance ^Committee. 27753 A 2