A Year of the Health Service
Set,—Your opening annotations are usually, as far as one can judge, so fair and factual that I feel I must mention a failing in this respect in your comment on the Health Service. From it one would expect that the Practitaner Review supported your remark (which may be true) that " the conntry G.P., with long distances to cover for domiciliary visits and hospital accommodation less easily obtainable than in the towns, is having a difficult time." What the article actually said on these topics is: " Increases in the mileage fund have helped to mitigate hardship " and: " A genuine attempt has been made to distribute the mileage fund fairly." M regards hospitals it says: "Now patients can be referred to hospitals and clinics with much greater frequency and ease than before," and: "A very serious matter for the country practitioner is his increasing exclusion from the many cottage hospitals dotted throughout the land," and the reason why this is so serious was explained as follows: " In the past, attending one's patient in hospital always kept one in touch with hospital standards, raised the whole tone of practice and was, in the long run, an untold benefit even to patients who never actually went to hospital. In fact in the past thirty years the standard of general practice was perhaps higher round these small hospitals than anywhere else in the country, for the knowledge that they would have hospital beds in their care attracted keen practitioners who otherwise would have gone elsewhere."
Actually nine months were spent collecting and sifting material for this article, and great pains were taken to make the issues involved intelligible to overseas and non-medical readers. An effort was also made to correct personal prejudices and misconceptions and above all to avoid Popular and facile statements like those imputed to Yours faithfully, THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.
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